


Break Me Every Time

by Solia



Category: Dexter (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Family, Hurt/Comfort, Unresolved Sexual Tension, debster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 08:22:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 29
Words: 229,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5578323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solia/pseuds/Solia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deb reacts to Dexter's news about Argentina and Dexter considers some of the implications. Alternative events unfold from there. Rated M for coarse language typical of the show and some explicit content. Based in the eighth season, with references to events of previous seasons. Originally posted on FanFiction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Obviously, I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I am merely playing with Showtime's toys. I swear to put them back in the toybox when I'm done.
> 
> Author's notes: This fic is the same as the work by the same title on FF.net. It morphed into a collection of the ideas and theories I had for the show as it blew itself off-course (in my opinion) in its second half, and features a less selfish Dexter, a stronger Deb and a more menacing and manipulative Vogel than the ones we ended up with on television. It also got wildly long. If you read and enjoy, or if you would like to offer any feedback, please do comment.

I don't even realise that I have no plan until I let myself inside and see them both, ignoring each other in the main living area of the beach house. Hannah is washing up in the kitchen and shoots me a relieved look that tells me it's been a long day holed up here with her least favourite person; Deb is firmly planted on the lounge with her feet up on the coffee table and a magazine open on her lap. Both are so familiar to me and I can see my perfect future, where I can come home to this every single day – Hannah, the spirited but home-loving wife, cooking and cleaning and raising my son and our possible future children, and my moody and foul-mouthed sister just _being there_. In my imaginings, she's not doing much more than she is right now, but she's definitely there.

My rational mind reminds me that this future isn't possible, and now I'm not so confident. I pause, still holding the door handle. This isn't going to be pretty, I realise, for me or for her. Momentarily I want to run back out the door.

"Dexter, you're home early," Hannah comments, meaningfully, leaning aside to look for a wall clock. Deb's eyes don't leave the text of the article she's perusing as she responds.

"He _isn't_ home," she says coldly. She turns the page. "He's at my house. So are you."

Hannah is a strong woman but she backs down from Debra's challenging tone. I have noticed this often, their dynamic. Hannah picks her battles, knowing she'd be hard pressed to beat Deb, regardless of whether she's armed with fists, weapons or words. I'm not sure whether they are the same when I'm not around but I think it's safe to assume so.

"Well, you know what I mean," Hannah mutters agreeably, returning to drying the dishes. She eyes me, wondering. She makes another attempt at cheery friendliness. "How was work? Were you busy? It can't have been too bad, I mean, you're not staying back late."

I'm hearing Hannah but I'm watching Deb. I'm watching her eyes focus more intensely on an article I know she isn't really reading. I'm watching her eyebrows draw closer together. I'm watching her lips press together as she struggles to keep a torrent of rude words locked inside. I'm watching her long fingers tighten on the edges of the magazine. She's an open book I learned to read a long time ago, a book about volatile emotions and inappropriate language and impulsive decisions. It's my very favourite book. I know her so well; I think I know her better than anyone else ever has, certainly better than our father did. That's why, as I'm watching her, I know to anticipate an impending explosion, and know I should intervene before it happens. I hesitate because my intervention is only going to postpone the inevitable, and redirect its fire onto me.

"Did you get much done?" Hannah presses, wanting to know where we stand on the Argentina situation. Have I put my notice in yet? Well, no. I can hardly tell work I'm leaving before I gather the guts to tell my sister. If she hears it from someone else I'll be in even deeper trouble. If she hears it from Hannah, I'll be dropping Hannah's dismembered body parts into the ocean, courtesy of Debra's rage. I don't doubt much anymore. "Did you-"

"Can we talk, Deb?" I interrupt, sure of what corner Hannah was about to back me into. I pull the door back open, gesturing for her to leave with me. Deb tosses the magazine aside and stands without answering. She has that pouty, tight look that I know precludes a problematic exchange. My stomach sinks. I can't win this. I can stalk people, kill them, cut their bodies into pieces, scatter them across the bay and then lie to the police and everyone I know about it, but I can't win an argument with my little sister without losing my cool.

Deb strides out and I glance once at Hannah as I close the door. She's very still, alert, suspicious. She doesn't really like me to be alone with Deb, I know. Maybe she'd prefer Deb not be told about our plan at all. But of course I can't leave Miami without telling my only sister. I wouldn't even think of it.

"She won't stop fucking cleaning," Deb complains darkly as we move around to the back of the house. The breeze catches our hair. It's a beautiful day. "Okay, I know I'm no domestic goddess, but seriously? My house isn't _that_ dirty." She casts me a nasty look as though I've disagreed with her, though I haven't opened my mouth. "Don't say a fucking word. It isn't. And don't defend her."

"I wasn't going to," I insist, knowing any attempt to do so would only be shot down. Like Hannah, I know to pick my battles against Debra Morgan.

"Good, because that much cleaning is bad for the soul." Deb leans against the railing of her back patio. "Explains a few things, maybe. Like how she came to be a lying succubus who poisons people."

She smiles thinly, waiting for me to bite and knowing I won't because I don't have a defence that is valid to her. I won't win that one, just like I won't win this next one. I steel myself.

"Deb, there's something I need to tell you," I begin, heavily. "Something important."

Her smile dissolves, replaced by a look of horror.

"Fuck, don't tell me she's pregnant," she says, eyes wide with disgust. I blink, taken aback and surprised by the unexpected suggestion. Her horror only just hides deep hurt. "No wonder she's been so fucking happy all day."

"No, she isn't," I assure her hurriedly. Deb exhales hard, staring out across the beach and the blue water.

"Thank fuck," she comments. "You scared me, you ass. That would have been the worst. You've got enough kids, anyway. To a normal woman."

I swallow, bolstered. If Hannah having my baby is the worst possible news I could offer Debra, then Argentina has to be an improvement on that.

"Harrison and I are leaving soon," I blurt out. She stares at me and I hurry on before I can lose my nerve. "With Hannah. We're moving to Argentina. Start someplace new."

Deb stares until she's certain I'm not joking, though I don't know why she does this, because I've never told jokes. Then she laughs, incredulous and humourless.

"Are you kidding?" she asks, smiling, still laughing. She thinks I'm ridiculous. I think briefly of how much I love to see her smile, but reflect on how rare that is these days. Because of me. "Move to another country with a wanted fugitive?" When I don't reply immediately, she adds, "What, didn't occur to you that people are looking for your girlfriend? And that they might spot her on those pesky cameras they like to put in airports? Or that her passport might raise a few red flags? Sounds like a fucking well-considered plan, Dexter."

I sigh, trying not to let her frustrate me. She's right of course. It isn't going to be easy.

"I haven't worked out _all_ the details yet," I admit, ignoring her derisive snort.

"No? Mr Perfect, without a fully-formed, flawless plan? Dexter, you're slipping." The sarcasm begins to rise to keep the more vulnerable emotions from showing. I see in her eyes that the news, and its implications, has started to sink in. "I can't believe you. You're just going to _run away_ , off into the stupid fucking South American sunset, with a fucking _poisoner_ and your son, all because she didn't cover her tracks as well as you did? Why do you have to leave your life behind because she's a fuck-up? Why does Harrison? Why-" She interrupts herself abruptly, a rare occurrence for Deb, before she can voice something especially passionate and angry. "Why are we having this conversation?"

"I just needed to let you know."

"Why?"

The question catches me off-guard, because I wasn't expecting her to need to ask it.

"Why?" I repeat, uncertain. What does she mean, why?

"Yeah, why?" she demands. The smile is gone, the laughter gone from her eyes. "Why are you telling me?"

"Because," I say, unsure how else to answer. I see it isn't enough, so I go on. "Because you're my sister."

"Right, I'm your sister," she agrees, without affection. "Your stupid, stupid sister who has clearly just passed her use-by date. I'm sorry, I didn't notice any expiry stamped on my fucking ass." She runs her hand through her hair, a sure sign that she's losing her grip. She gathers herself, and rounds on me again. "You're a jerk, you know that? A selfish, heartless jerk. You're not telling me _because I'm your sister_. It has nothing to do with me. You're telling me because it makes _you_ feel better to have told me. Even if you know it'll upset me. This is some creepy control thing. It's all about _you_ and what _you_ want me to do. Well, fuck you, fucker." She laughs once with no humour. "I've been such an idiot."

The look on her face is the one page I can't bear to read, that one about disbelief and wonder as she discovers something new about me that she doesn't like. I hate that look. It hurts me.

"Deb, what are you talking about?" I ask, irritation colouring my tone. I'm not really annoyed, but sometimes I'm more like her than I care to admit. I get defensive, too. Right now, if I reflect on how I feel, I know I'm acting irritated because I'm scared of what will happen next, and I know if I grate on Deb by getting her to react to my abrasiveness, her reaction will be explosive but predictable. If I leave her too long with that look on her face, I don't know what will happen. I don't _want_ to know. Every time she learns something she doesn't like about me, I imagine that it erodes her love for me, and that look has been more and more common this past year. How much love is left? What happens when it runs out? Sometimes in my life, I've considered my existence, or _existences_ if one counts my various personas, and wondered – do we exist because existence is a fact of being alive, or do we exist because people around us perceive us to exist? When people die, do their spirits really continue to exist, or only until the people who remember them forget?

For me, what it boils down to is whether Dexter Morgan, the friendly, smart, slightly boring son of Harry and brother of Debra, will still exist if Deb stops believing in me. Obviously, my heart will still beat. I'll still be alive. But I've worked so hard on building this existence as a blood spatter analyst in Miami. For the longest time, its most faithful believer was my devoted sister, and if my own faith in my humanity was shaken, I only had to look to her for inspiration. Now things are different. If she turns away, does _this_ version of Dexter melt away? I'm scared to find out.

She does as I expect, and gets angry.

"I'm talking about you, treating me like last week's newspaper," she snarls. She straightens to her full height, not far off mine, as she prepares for the fight we're about to have. "I've served my purpose and now you're done with me. I can't _fucking_ believe you. I fall for this shit _every time_." She inhales sharply, gearing up for the next tirade, but I hear the breath catch and know I've not avoided anything just by making her angry. "I've lied for you; I falsified evidence for you; I've destroyed crime scenes with you; I killed an innocent woman, my _boss_ , for you." Her voice shakes with this admission, and she glances around for eavesdroppers. When she looks back at me, I see that her eyes are wide with disbelief. There's a massive point being made here, and I'm missing it, and she knows it. "I'm hiding your skank murderess of a girlfriend in my house, even though I _fucking hate her_ and even though she poisoned me _twice_ , once in an attempt to _kill me in a car crash_. I've been to my own personal hell and back and given up everything I believe in to do right by you. You tell me nothing, you lie to me, you flaunt your relationship in front of me even though you know how I feel about it, you break me over and over, and still I give... And for all of that – I get _this_."

"Deb..." I murmur, because I don't know what she wants me to say. Of course, it's all true. She's done so much for me. But where this is coming from, I don't understand. I'm not like her. I'm not normal. "Look, I understand-"

"Do you?" She doesn't believe me.

"Yeah, I mean," I begin, faltering, "I'm going to miss you while I'm away, but whenever I'm back in Miami you'll have me all to yourself, and I'll come back heaps and I'll call all the time. It'll be okay."

Slowly, Deb shakes her head. Her pained expression tells me I'm not only on the wrong page, I'm reading from the wrong story entirely.

"No, Dexter. You're leaving me."

I pause, hearing her words and hearing what she is saying, and begin to understand both what she's trying to tell me and something else. Something I haven't really understood until right now.

I am leaving her.

"You're leaving me," she repeats, more shakily this time. "After everything I've given. You're leaving me behind, with _nothing_." I can't think of anything to say, because I'm only just realising this for myself. I knew I was leaving Miami, my job, my friends, my bowling team and my son's nanny but it hasn't occurred to me that leaving Miami to go on the run with a wanted murder will make contact with Deb difficult, if not impossible. With Hannah being sought by authorities, my sudden departure from Miami will not go unnoticed and Deb, my only remaining relative, would be closely monitored for contact with me. "You and Harrison are all I have in the world, and you're leaving me. Well, goodbye, Dexter, and thanks for all the fucking fish."

She shoves past me, more bodily than necessary, but I've seen the welling of tears that she's trying to hide from me. I turn with her and catch her hand, not ready to finish this interaction. She whips her hand free from mine and lashes out, slapping me hard across the face. She's never slapped me before, and it hurts. I don't get a chance to complain, however.

"Don't you fucking touch me," she hisses, pointing her finger in my face dangerously. "You've had enough of me already. Just take your whore and your kid and get the fuck out of my life. And don't call. And don't write. Not that I expected you to, anyway, but just to make it clean. I know you know all about cleaning up, and this here," she gestures to the space between us, "is a massive fucking mess. So go. And stay gone."

She starts away again across the beach and for a second I let her retreat, but I can't handle what she's just said. _So go_. She doesn't mean that. _Get out of my life and stay gone_. Now, I know that's an overreaction. She'll miss me. She'll want me back. _Don't call, don't write, make it clean_. She's got to know I'll find a way, I'll find a way to stay in contact. _We're a massive fucking mess_. That's not true; we're not perfect but we can be fixed, I know it.

"Debra, stop," I plead, following her over the sand. She ignores me until I'm close enough that her long hair flicks into my face. "Deb, please wait."

" _No_." I have quick reflexes but I don't think to use them on my sister as she turns on me and slams both hands into my chest. I stumble back and she's already there, fist slamming into the side of my head. I back right up, raising my hands to protect my head from her next attack. She advances. "No, Dexter! I'm not doing anything else you ask. I've done enough, or don't you think so? Don't you think everything is quite enough? Especially when the reward is nothing?" She shakes her head, furious and hurt and unable to quite believe what's happening. "You still look shocked. I'm not sure how you pictured this conversation going down when you decided to up and abandon me. Fuck you."

"I didn't think of it like that," I confess, hoping she'll soften, but it only makes her madder.

"Now that'd be something new – Dexter Morgan, not thinking through how his stupid actions might affect others!" she says with rich sarcasm. "So it didn't cross your mind that I might be upset about saying goodbye to my only nephew forever? The only child I'm ever likely to have? You didn't think I'd miss Harrison?"

I stare at Deb and feel disappointed in myself. No, I haven't considered that. Nor have I considered how Harrison will feel about losing his only aunt. It's not like he sees her every day but he definitely notices when he goes a while without aunty time. Deb continues.

"What about all the serial killers of Miami?" she demands. "What about Saxon? Whose house will he come to when you're not around? Thought you'd just catch my progress on the late night news, when they find me with my skull sliced open?"

"I'll have Saxon taken care of before I go," I promise quickly. This much I have actually considered. "You'll be safe."

"Oh, good, another murder they can link us both to," Deb says sarcastically. "I don't suppose it occurred to you, either, that there might be a few questions once you disappear with a wanted killer? Hmm? Questions that you will be leaving just one person behind to answer for you. What should I tell Astor and Cody next time they call? 'Sorry guys, your only remaining parent fucked off and left us'. What am I supposed to tell Angel? And that Marshal? Do you _really_ think they'll believe that I had no idea about you and Hannah? And when they investigate you to find out why you'd run off with a psycho, and follow La Guerta's leads, and come to the end of the line at my name and yours, who is going to be here for them to arrest?" She takes a few breaths, looking at me with utter contempt. "You're not just leaving me; you're leaving me to take the fall that should be yours. _You're_ the fuck-up. _You're_ the mistake. Not me. I was a good person before I let you ruin me."

"You _are_ a good person," I interject quickly. I don't know why I think it'll help; it's never helped before to remind her of this fact. I'm not hurt by her accusations. None of them are false.

"You ruined my life," she reminds me, "and to top it all off, you're going to leave me here to go to jail for you and your mistakes. Was that always part of the plan, or just a convenient ending you stumbled across?"

"I never wanted that for you," I promise, to no effect. How can she not know this?

"So you really just didn't consider it as a possibility?" she checks, disbelieving. I shake my head. "You were just thinking, 'I'm an idiot in love with another idiot; I know, I'll run off with her without thinking about the consequences for everyone else'?" I nod, feeling like she's understanding now. I never meant for any of these futures. I clearly need to think this through more. Deb folds her arms and levels a serious, poisonous gaze at me. I'm not out of the woods yet. "Are you the only one allowed to be in love, Dexter?"

My heart breaks, something it's only done a few times before, and usually for her. How could I forget? How much am I hurting her every day, keeping Hannah in her house, kissing Hannah in front of her, all the while knowing, without consciously thinking about it, that Deb is in love with me? Or thinks she is? Doesn't matter whether it's real or invented – she feels the betrayal real enough. How long have I been this selfish? Have I always been this awful to her? Surely not; she wouldn't love me in the first place if I'd always been this bad. But now I see how much of a betrayal my leaving with Hannah would be to her.

"I didn't think of any of that," I whisper, and she screams in frustration.

"You _never_ do!" She covers her face with her hands for a long time, trying to collect herself. "You never think. You just act, you destroy, you come back around, you apologise like it means something, you say you _love_ me," she emphasises the word like it's unclean, "and then you keep going through the cycle. And stupid me, I let you. I forgive, I let you in, I love you back. It's a cycle and I should see it when it starts and I should run, but I don't. So I guess I'm just as at fault as you are. Maybe I deserve this."

I don't like this road, where Deb spirals down into despair and self-loathing. It has almost gotten us both killed. It also pulls me apart from the inside, like a knitted scarf unpicked stitch by stitch.

"Deb, you don't deserve it," I say. "You don't deserve _me_. You deserve so much better than what I have done to you."

"I hate you."

"You don't," I insist, more to convince myself than her.

"What happened with 'we'll always be together'?" she asks. She seems not to have even heard me. "I tried to get out of your life, you dragged me back, and in the car before the lake, you said that. What was the point? Why did you work so hard to pull me back into your mess if you were just going to leave me in it?" The anger subsides briefly to let me see the deep hurt. "You said, 'we'll always be together, right?' You made me feel guilty for trying to kill us – _but you do worse to me every day_. I don't understand. Why? You didn't mean any of it."

"I did. I do. I never want to live without you."

"But you're leaving."

Of course I'm not, I want to say, because the idea seems ludicrous, but I catch sight of the beach house's back glass door and see Hannah watching us anxiously. She moves out of sight when she sees me looking straight at her. She's being hunted; she can't stay here. I love her, too, and I've made a promise to her. Instinct tells me she'll leave me if I don't work to keep our relationship, so I know I have to keep my promise and go with her to Argentina. Miserably, I reflect that this same instinct would have come in handy in my years of being Deb's big brother. I haven't worked hard on maintaining this bond. In fact I've utterly trashed it, tested it to its limits. I've nearly broken it several times. And despite all the abuse, it's still beautiful to me. I'm not willing to leave it.

Inspiration strikes me.

"Come with us."

"Come? With you?" she asks, slowly, unbelievingly. I nod enthusiastically. Yes, that would fix everything. I could have it all – Hannah, Harrison, freedom, and _Deb_. The facts melt away for a moment and I wait for it to sink in for her.

Her expression contorts into someone I don't know, and then I'm in pain, clutching my face. She's punched me, and she's gearing up for another. I block, head down, and her knee comes up into my cheek. I can't believe I didn't see that coming. I reel from the blow. I could fight back but it doesn't even occur to me. I shout her name and beg her to stop. She keeps going, hitting every part of me that she can reach and screaming at me, "No! That's enough. You don't get to tell me to stop. You don't get to tell me to drop my life at your whim and follow you into a life on the run with your happy fucking family. You don't get to tell me what to do. You've said enough."

I sink to my knees, hoping she'll see the move as an admission of defeat and lay off. She knows it's wrong to beat on someone at such a disadvantage and so pulls herself back. It's only for a second, before she kicks me solidly in the stomach and I collapse backwards, curling to cradle my bruised core. She leaps on top of me and continues to hit me. I'm sore and aching but from this vulnerable position it's harder to ignore the instinct to fight back. I grab at her hands and yell at her.

"Deb, Deb!" I catch one of her wrists and manage to keep it still but the other catches my brow and I feel my skull sink into the sand behind me. Above me, her image blurs. Blood seeps into my eye. "Deb..."

"Debra, stop!" Hannah screams from the back patio. "Dexter! Dex-"

She must be coming closer because Deb gives me a brief reprieve. She slowly comes back into focus, glaring back in the direction of her home. She points threateningly at Hannah.

"Stay _the fuck_ out of this," she orders. She's so angry and forceful that if it were me she were speaking to, I wouldn't dare contradict her, so I'm surprised to hear Hannah try.

"Debra, please, just-"

"Hannah, get inside the fucking house," I demand, not willing to see her involved and hurt but also annoyed with her lack of understanding. This is family business. I _deserve_ this. Deb is my family and if this attack is what she needs to do to feel she's even with me, to start to love me again, then it needs to happen. I can handle it.

I assume Hannah retreats because Deb relaxes slightly. I'm hopeful, and release her wrist to gently stroke the back of her hand. She stares unflinchingly at my affectionate gesture, then she pulls away and whips the back of the same hand across my face. My head snaps to the side and sand fills my ear. I see stars. The beating starts over.

"No more, Dexter," she sobs. When did teary eyes become heart-wrenching sobs? Her face is wet, her hair is sticking to her cheeks and the tears are coming fast and heavy enough to fall onto me. I feel them, one, two, three, on my shocked skin... One of her hands closes around my throat. "No more. You don't own me. You don't control me. You don't get to tell me to stop." She hits me again, and again, and even though I know I should throw her off, it's become too late for that. My consciousness is slipping. "You can't stop me. You can't... stop me." The next blow slides off my forehead but I feel it. "You... Stop me." She's crying so hard, she can barely speak. Every strike is less powerful than the last. I try again to grasp her hands but I'm weaker, too. I can't breathe. "Stop me... Stop me..."

There's blood in my eye and sand glued to my skin by blood and tears. I can barely see, I can't breathe, but I hear the change in her tone, from statement to request. _Stop me_. She's so angry with me, she can't make herself stop. I've driven her to this. I deserve the beating. But she's right, she's done so much for me and I've done so little in return. I can't justify not doing as she asks. I catch her fingers and, gathering my remaining energy, buck my torso upwards to unseat her. I push her over onto the sand beside me and tightly hold both of her wrists. She struggles as I pull her against me and wrap my arms over hers to keep them pinned. We both struggle to breathe enough air. She tries once to knock her head back into mine. I press my head against the side of hers to minimise her opportunity to try again. I hold her so tight. I never want to let her go.

It takes a minute, but soon enough all the fight is gone from my sister and she's dissolving into uncontrollable sobs in my arms. I haven't seen her like this since Lundy died in front of her, and on reflection, this is maybe even worse.

We stay like this for so long. The sun moves across the sky, heading west. Deb and I don't have anything else to say to each other for now. She stops crying eventually, all run out of tears. We watch the tides change. My body and face aches and the split eyebrow stings but I have no reason to complain. Not really. I have everything I need. I only know this when I almost lose it, and I know right now that I can't be without her. I can't leave yet. I need more time. I need a plan to keep her safe, and to keep the channel open so I can still see her. I don't know what I'll tell Hannah, but I try not to think about that.

Further down the beach, other people have arrived to enjoy the sea. They won't come onto Deb's section of beach but they could get close enough to notice I'm bleeding and holding a swollen-eyed, tearful woman in a restrictive embrace. We'll have to move soon.

Deb notices them, too, and sniffs pitifully. I loosen my grip on her and take to stroking her knotty hair away from her face. Some of my blood is on her temple. I feel I should wipe it away but selfishly I want to leave it there, marking her as mine. She said I don't own her but my primal self disagrees and knows that if anything is mine, it's Deb.

I can't very well say any of that, of course, but I realise I need to say something.

"I do take you for granted," I say finally. "I don't deserve you. But I need you. I'm not sure how I'll survive, but if I'm separated from you... I can't imagine my life without you in it. I'll make it work, I promise."

I don't know how, but I have to work it out. She sniffs again and doesn't answer for a long time.

"I can't imagine mine without you, either," she whispers. "There won't be anything left in it. Everyone else has already left me."

Again she's right. She's lost so much, in part because of me. Lundy might have lived had I just killed Trinity when I first had the chance; as might have Rita. Harry died because of me. Brian's love wasn't real, but if it were not for her relation to me, he would never have targeted her. It is rare that I feel something as strongly as I do right now – regret, guilt and overwhelming adoration for the sister whose life I've systematically destroyed for no decent reason. I release her completely and stiffly, achingly, shuffle over the sand to crouch facing her. She doesn't react or move away.

"I love you so much, Debra," I say, surprised by how loaded with those huge emotions my voice sounds. I press my hands against the sides of her head to keep her face steady as I stare directly into her eyes. Eyes which, I can't believe I've never noticed before, are nearly the same hazel colour as mine. We're not blood but we share eye colour. I rejoice in this tiny gift. "It's not just words. It's real. No matter what anyone says about what I can or can't feel, I do love you. Every day. No matter where I am. And I'm stupid, so I don't often say it, but I'm blessed to have you. You don't have to worry about anything. I'm not going to let you take the fall for me. I'm going to figure something out. I'm never going to let anything happen to you."

How had I forgotten this promise, this duty, when I made my new promise to Hannah? How can I protect my baby sister from the dangers I've let into her life from another continent? I see my own eyes reflected in Deb's and know I've made a mistake. If she doesn't want to come to Argentina, then I will need to re-evaluate my plan with Hannah. She might have to go alone and I might have to live between here and Argentina. I don't know yet. I will make it work. It always works out in the end. Even this massive, fucked-up mess of a love I share with my sister. It will work. I make this promise to the universe and seal it with a firm kiss to her forehead. She is mine, and mine to protect.

I stand and she struggles to her feet beside me. She stumbles and I catch her.

"Pins and needles," she admits grimly, testing her weight on her unwilling leg. We hear laughter from further down the beach and know the visitors are closer than before. They cannot be allowed to see us looking like we do. I'm sure she's made a mess of me. I've barely touched her, and look what a mess I've made of her.

I keep one arm around her shoulders and lean to scoop the other behind her knees. She doesn't fight it, but she does give me an unimpressed look. I carry her back to the beach house. The glass door is still open and Hannah is sitting on the lounge where I'd first found Deb pretending to read. Upon our entry, Hannah abruptly stands, a mix of concern, anger and nervousness crossing her pretty features.

"Dexter," she says, but can't seem to think of anything else to say. She eyes Deb with displeasure. Perhaps she'd hoped I would overpower her out there and accidentally kill her. For her part, Deb, cradled in my arms, staunchly ignores my girlfriend. I start towards Debra's room to set her down, but Hannah steps into my way. I can see she's worried about me. Her eyes skate over my injuries. "Is everything okay?"

"It will be," I tell her, needing her to lay off and wait for the full explanation so I can fix my other relationship first. I go around her, thinking I should at least offer her the summarised version. "We will be fine. But we need to talk about our plans."

Hannah stares after me with an unreadable expression as I carry Deb to her bedroom and sit her down on the edge of her bed. I go to her bathroom and fetch a facecloth to clean her up. I catch sight of myself in the mirror. I'm swollen, but not as bad as I suspected. I'll look much worse tomorrow and the day after. I grab a towel and wet one corner to use on myself.

When I return to Deb she's found a hairbrush and is tidying herself up. She's kicked her shoes off. I tenderly wipe away the mascara tracks down her cheeks, and my blood from her temple, with some regret. I tell myself she's mine regardless of blood inside or out. While I work she takes the towel from me and begins the same process on my face, minus the make-up. I let her, enjoying her dedicated attention. I could live off this, I think.

Her hands, close to my eye as she cleans up the split eyebrow, catch my attention. I reach for one, slowly, and sadly observe the purpling of her bony knuckles and the tear in one of her nails. Even when I try not to, I hurt her.

"I wish I could make a promise to you," I whisper, so Hannah doesn't hear from the next room, "to never hurt you again, ever. But I'm too scared of breaking it."

Deb acts like I didn't speak. She finishes clearing away my blood, wriggling her toes the whole time to encourage blood flow back there. She throws the towel and cloth into the empty bathtub and rifles through her medicine cabinet. She returns with butterfly stitches for my eyebrow and some epic painkillers. We both take the drugs and she patches up my wound.

I go to the door, ready now to leave her be, like she so often asks me to do but which I'm so often unable or unwilling to do.

Beyond the door, Hannah is waiting for me, standing in the centre of the living room and expecting an explanation. I start to go through, to shut Deb in here to await the onset of the medication and to fall deeply, peacefully asleep. But she says one word to me.

"Stay?"

 _Stay_. I know she means more than what she's saying, and I can't promise it all, but I can give her right now.

I look into her eyes. _My sister's eyes_. Hazel, like mine – has this coincidence gone unnoticed by her as long as it has me? Hazel is not a common colour like blue or brown. Did people used to see us as kids, with these matching hazel eyes, and really believe we were siblings? Do people still think that now? The idea that hundreds of strangers over the course of our lives together might have mistaken Deb and I as blood brother and sister brings me such peace and happiness. How could I think I would find this in Argentina, with Hannah and Harrison and without Debra?

Hannah is watching me accusingly as I close the bedroom door with her on the other side. I know she's pissed. I don't blame her. I just can't bring myself to feel motivated to fix it right now. I'll fix that later.

Deb has crawled further up the bed to settle her head on her pillow. She has her back to me but has left a space in front of her stomach for me to sit on the bed beside her. I ignore this space and lie down on the other half of the bed. She feels the compression of the mattress under my weight and rolls over to let me see her surprised expression. I nestle my sore head into the soft pillow and offer my arm to her. Without words she accepts, shifting over to cuddle into my side. Words aren't necessary. I know. She knows. She was right.

The cycle she spoke of has started again.

Right now, everything is okay. She's accepted my useless apology and detrimental love because it's how she survives. How long before I lie to her, break her, leave her? How long before I come crawling back with an apology that doesn't fix anything?

I hold her close. Soon enough I'm going to destroy her again. I try to enjoy the meantime.


	2. Chapter 2

It's the buzzing of my phone that brings me around the next morning. I blink, surprised by how tired I am, and find I'm not waking in my own bed. Dazed and groggy, I reach my stiff arm behind me to awkwardly yank the phone free of its pocket. I answer it without looking at the screen.

"Yeah?"

No, I'm not the most articulate person I know.

"Dexter, where are you?" It's Angel Batista and he sounds annoyed. "Before you ask, no, it's not your day off. It's Vince's, so we really need you here-"

I've suddenly realised where I am and I sit up abruptly, grimacing in pain as my body reminds me of the awkward position I've slept in and the beating I took yesterday. I'm alone in Deb's room.

"Deb," I say, interrupting Angel. I jump off the bed and hurry to the bathroom. She's not there, but the shower walls are wet. I try not to panic. She woke up and had a shower in the next room without me hearing – how long ago was that? Where is she now? What's going through her head? "I-"

"Deb's been here for an hour already," Angel replies impatiently. "I asked her where you were. She said she didn't know. She tried calling but you didn't answer."

I briefly remove my phone from my ear to glance at the screen. Five missed calls and a text. I can't believe I've slept through all this.

"I'm sorry, Angel," I apologise, pacing the room and trying to calm down. Deb is okay. She's at work, pretending like nothing's wrong. I can draw strength from hers and do the same. But I'd rather not. I don't want to face her right now and remind us both of how much I've hurt her. "Actually, I don't think it's a good idea I come in. I... I'm a little worse for wear."

I avoid looking in a mirror but I know my face is puffy and bruised.

"Dexter, I don't care how hung over you are right now," Angel snaps, "just get your ass here. I expect you here in half an hour. No excuses."

He hangs up. He's not usually that abrupt with me; we've been good friends for a long time. I gather that there is shit going down at the station, shit that requires his attention and that is stressing him out. In any case, I don't see any way out of following his instructions without looking suspicious. I strip, shower quickly and redress in the same clothes. They're crumpled and there's a blood stain on the shirt, but I know I have another in the car.

I let myself back out into the living area and find Hannah standing at the back door, talking quietly on the phone. We're both startled by one another – her because she hadn't expected to see me, me because I'd actually forgotten all about her. She tells her contact that she needs to go, and hangs up.

"You're up," she comments, quite coolly. "You look terrible."

I ignore the tone and gesture to the phone, suspicion rising, unbidden.

"Who was on the phone?" I ask immediately. She's meant to be in hiding.

"Arlene," she answers easily, folding her arms. "Why?"

"She's being watched. They know you know her. Her calls are being monitored – you know that." I'm both annoyed and frightened by this small act of stupidity. It should be obvious to Hannah that if she doesn't want to be found, she needs to stay hidden, but she doesn't seem to possess the same instinct to keep her head down as I have. This isn't the first time she's slipped up. When she killed Sal Price she left residue on the pen of her poison, and when she poisoned my sister there was enough of the crushed medication leftover in Deb's water bottle for me to be able to pin the accident to Hannah. Deb's words from yesterday return to me: _You're going to run away, all because she didn't cover her tracks as well as you did_?

"Relax, I'm not an idiot," Hannah snaps. "She bought that phone this morning. They don't know about it. Anyway, if they do, there'll be marshals at the door in five minutes to take me away, and won't you and your sister just _love_ that?"

"Why would I be happy about that?" I ask, incredulous. "That makes no fucking sense at all." I shake my head and go looking for my car keys. "I have to go to work. I'm late."

"That's right, just leave while we're having a conversation," Hannah says sarcastically. Her sarcasm doesn't bite like Deb's but it's meant the same way. "It's not like we've got important things to discuss."

I sigh as I grab the keys. Now I'm hurting my girlfriend, too. It doesn't hurt me the same way but I still don't like to do it.

"I know we've got a lot to talk about," I admit, going to her. She keeps her arms folded staunchly. "I know you're upset. What I said yesterday evening, I didn't mean we're going to cancel our plans. I only meant we need to adjust them. They're not quite right yet. We need to talk about our plans and get them clear in our heads before we make any moves."

"Everything seemed pretty clear until yesterday afternoon," Hannah mentions. There's a hurt in her eyes, and I can see she's holding back a stinging comment. "What the hell happened, Dexter? You knew Deb wouldn't like it yet you told her anyway, and let her beat the shit out of you. Now you're going to risk all our lives by staying in Miami longer, all because she doesn't want us to leave?"

I struggle to articulate what I've realised in a way she'll understand, but I know she can't. She's a different kind of selfish from me, but selfish is still a word I can label her with. Hannah always does what suits Hannah. She once poisoned Debra in an attempt to kill her, even though she knew it would devastate me, because she couldn't work out a way to keep me to herself.

"I can't leave her. Not yet," I manage finally. "I need time, and a plan."

"Did you fuck her?" Hannah demands, eyes narrowed, and I step back. I feel a complex wave of emotions, mostly anger and disbelief.

"What the _fuck_?" I ask, shocked. "Where the _fuck_ did that come from? No – she's _my sister_."

"That wouldn't worry her," Hannah retorts. "She's way too possessive of you to just call it sisterly love, Dexter. And are you any better? Who spends a whole night in bed with their sister?"

"You're crazy. That's the most ridiculous thing you've ever said to me."

I walk away, disturbed. In the same way as my love for my son, my devotion to Deb is the purest thing about me. How could Hannah try to poison even that? Ignoring the fact that Deb has told me that she's in love with me, I feel offended by Hannah's accusations. How I feel about Deb today is the same as I have ever felt about her. I have loved her same regardless of whether she was vying for our father's attention, annoying me for hints at work while she climbed the career ladder, strapped naked to a table by my brother, working with Lundy to catch me when she was put on the Bay Harbour Butcher case, running my life for me in the aftermath of Rita's death, walking in on me killing Travis Marshall, lying in a hospital bed, arresting Hannah or beating me up on the beach. I adore her. Sometimes I am more aware than at other times, but it doesn't change. It will never change. What Hannah is suggesting can never be because I don't change like that.

"I'm leaving," I say, "before you come up with even more perverted stories about my family."

Hannah has the grace to look apologetic as I shut the door. I get into my car, change my shirt and head to work.

"I told you Hannah would only lead you into trouble," my father's voice comments mildly. I imagine him sitting calmly in the back, looking out the window. "You don't think straight when you're around her. You're making mistakes – missing lots of minor details that can add up to a catastrophe."

I eye his image in the rear mirror. I know logically that he isn't there, that he's long dead, that he's a construction of my own mind to give voice to my own conscience, since I perceive myself as being without one, but that doesn't make him or our interactions any less real.

"I'm thinking fine. I've got it under control," I insist, putting my foot down to make an orange light. I just slip through the intersection before the lights change. Harry raises an eyebrow.

"Really?" he asks. "Just like you thought through the decision to leave Miami with Hannah? You hadn't even considered the implications for Debra. If you leave town at the same time that Hannah McKay drops off the radar, flags will go up. You're strongly linked to her, and Debra's linked to you. If the feds can't get their hands on you they'll go after your sister. And thanks to you, look at what they'll find if they dig deep enough."

He sits back, levelling at me a disapproving stare. I know he's referring to the two people Deb's killed because of situations I've put her in, and to the multiple cover-ups I've embroiled her in. It won't be hard to find evidence of our guilt if someone really looks, and if neither of us is in a position to redirect the sniffing.

"I'm working on it," I remind Harry. "I'll work something out; I won't let any of that happen to Deb. I've just got to get Hannah clear of Miami first and then-"

"I didn't raise you to get caught, Dexter," my father interrupts, leaning forward against his seatbelt. "I know I didn't leave either of you with much, but I left _you_ with two things: a duty, and a gift. One is Debra, and the other is the Code. Work out which is which."

His words stir something within me and I feel uneasy. I look up for his reflection but he's gone, and I'm left to complete my drive in lonely, contemplative silence.

On arrival at Miami Metro I do get a few odd looks, but no one actually addresses me until I exit the elevator on Homicide's level and head for my little office. Angel, leaning over Quinn's desk to read something on his computer screen, has to do a double-take when I catch his eye.

"Dexter," he says, shocked. "What happened to you, bro?"

I wince, having mostly forgotten my own pitiful appearance in light of my bigger problems.

"I told you, I'm a little worse for wear," I answer weakly.

"You look like you've been in a fight," Quinn comments with interest. "Did you win?"

"Uh-"

"Quinn," Angel chides, then looks back at me worriedly. He is such a good man, with a good heart, I think. I should try to be more like him. Then I wouldn't have so many broken people around me, ruined and cracked by my own rough overuse. "Dexter, what happened? Who did this to you?"

There is a long silence. I can't tell them.

"Me."

We three all glance over to Deb's desk, where she's sitting at her computer. She waves at us, showing everyone the purpled knuckles of her right hand. Angel and Quinn stare at her in shock, but I feel momentary relief. I don't know what she's going to do or say next – she could confess to everything again, or turn me in, or shoot me. Still, I feel better now that I see her. Her eyelids are a little puffy from yesterday's tears, clear to me despite her makeup, but there's nothing else discernibly wrong with her.

The other two men come to terms with what they've just learned quite quickly. Quinn sits back in his seat and smirks, impressed. Angel smiles tightly around at us all, clearly uncomfortable but also quietly amused and wanting to be diplomatic.

"Oh," is all he says at first. "Well, I suppose everything is all settled now, right?"

"Absolutely," Deb and I both agree at once. I hope it will end there, but Deb can't resist adding, "I made my point."

"You definitely did," Quinn concurs, grinning at her. He's meant to be dating my nanny Jamie but he'll always have a soft spot for my sister. He'll always love her. I know I can count on him to be there for her, in whatever capacity she needs, when I do leave her. I have had my problems with Quinn but right now I feel warmth towards him. He turns his grin on me. "Dex – how embarrassing."

I smile patiently; that warmth is cooling. Deb's return smile is false but her enjoyment in my humiliation is real. She's pissed with me. I try to take this as a positive. After yesterday's meltdown, I consider anger an improvement, a sign that she is rebuilding.

"Yeah, but I deserved it," I offer, knowing I won't hear the end of this anyway. The fake smile widens. She's not letting me off.

"Yeah, you did."

"Deb, we should talk," I say, trying to sound casual as I heft my bag higher onto my shoulder and start towards my office. She swivels her chair to follow me with her eyes but she doesn't get up.

"No, I've said everything I want to say to you," she replies. There is no malice to her tone but I feel it anyway. Her eyes challenge me to say more, to beg her in front of our friends and colleagues so she can rip into me again. I have no choice but to back down. I concede.

"I think I should stick to the lab today," I tell Angel as I continue away. I indicate my face. "Hopefully you won't need me out in public."

"Hopefully not," Angel agrees, graciously letting me off the hook. I depart eagerly.

In my lab I drop my things and collapse into my chair. I lower my face into my hands and move my fingers slowly over the swollen features. She hasn't forgiven me after all. She's gone back to angry. I can deal with angry. It's better than broken.

I eventually glance up to look through my little window. The many faces of Miami Metro Police Station continue their usual busy existence with no knowledge of the crumbling world of the Morgans. For her part, Deb seems like her normal self. She's been away for months but since returning this week she fits back in here like a piece missing from an old jigsaw. Everyone is glad to see her back. She is brilliant at this job; it's only because I turned her life upside down that she ever needed to leave it.

I get to work and find that there is plenty to keep me busy. Angel has left some high-priority cases on my desk that need to be fast-tracked. Most of the day has gone by before I feel my phone going off again, and pull it out to read the message.

_Daniel isn't a threat any longer. No need to be worried. We've talked._

Nice try, Vogel, I think, closing the message. Her psychopathic son started his killing career with his own brother. No need to be worried? Not a threat? If he could murder his only sibling, then he will always be a threat. He is beyond saving.

I remember that _I_ killed my own brother, too, but maintain that it doesn't count. Brian wasn't my sibling in the way Deb is. I killed him to save her, and that makes it different.

I note that the other text message from this morning is still unread and thumb down to it, eyes flickering up to look for Deb on the other side of my lab window. She's not in her seat and for a second my stomach sinks – where the hell is she? Then she appears, stepping out of the elevator with Quinn and Miller and holding a burrito. She looks happy with them. Happier than she's been around me in almost a year. I remember how grateful she used to be for me. I'm no longer that guy for her.

Regretful, I return my attention to my phone. To my surprise the message is from Astor, my stepdaughter. I begin to feel even worse. Deb's right, I'd forgotten about my other children. Astor and Cody taught me how to be a dad. Both of their parents died because of my choices. I am responsible for them, yet I rarely see them. And I may never have been able to see them again.

_R u coming next week? x_

A scroll through my missed calls reveals that she accounts for two of the five from this morning. Angel was the other three. Deb lied to him, she never tried me. I spend several minutes trying to make sense of Astor's message and can only conclude that somehow I must have implied I would be seeing them in the near future, although I can't recall any mention of a likely visit in any of our recent communication. Our last set of texts were more than a month ago, and I didn't make any such promises. I wonder what I've forgotten. Disturbed by what a terrible father I've become, to mirror the terrible brother I've apparently become, I put the phone away without responding.

There are worse brothers, I remind myself. I stand and grab Angel's blood reports from the printer. I collate everything he needs into neat folders, check and sign everywhere that needs to be signed. There are brothers who drown their innocent little brothers in swimming pools. I decide to visit Vogel on my way back to Deb's.

I hand in the reports to Angel and I tell him I'm skipping home to relieve Jamie of Harrison and to finish some of the paperwork I've left there. He doesn't question me, but offers me a pitying smile. I cannot blame him. I'm a Jujitsu black belt yet in a fight with my skinny little sister I come off worse.

I feel Deb's hot gaze on the back of my neck as I leave. Her eyes aren't the only ones on me. The whole office has heard by now. I don't want to stop to talk to her; no matter what is said, it'll be a spectacle. So I send her a quick text – _going to Vogel's_ – as I get into the lift. The doors close and I see her attention move from me to her phone.

Her reply is quick.

_Don't care_.

Then, before I'm even out of the building, a follow-up:

_Why?_

I can't help but smile.

Vogel is surprised to see me. She lets me inside and worries about my injuries. I fob her off; she tries to make me tea. I don't want any. I want to discuss the matter at hand.

"It wasn't my Daniel, was it?" she asks, horrified, when I avoid talking about my ordeal. "Did you find him already? Dexter, please tell me-"

"I haven't killed him yet," I interrupt. "This is just the remains of altercation with Deb."

Evelyn is immediately calmed.

"Oh," she says, and doesn't seem concerned any longer. Like Angel, she doesn't appear to want any more information than this. She doesn't even ask whether Deb is okay. Clearly, she has inferred that as the less volatile sibling I have come off worse, and she does not want to become involved.

"You said Saxon isn't a risk anymore," I remind her as she fusses over her own teacup. "What did you mean?"

"Exactly what I said, Dexter," she answers calmly. "Daniel and I talked at length. We have an understanding. He's not going to be a problem."

She beams at me, a big smile that makes me feel sad. She's discovered her son is still alive and he's worse than she could have imagined, but she's still delighted to have him back. I think of Deb and how for thirty years she thought she'd gotten a good deal from fate in being given me for a brother.

"I'm sure he was very convincing," I comment, trying to be tactful, "but you can't forget, Evelyn, what he is. He's a psychopath. He killed your other son."

Her smile falters at this reminder of the awful truth. She goes back to pouring her tea.

"Yes, well, he is very sorry about that," she insists. "He regrets that very deeply. He wishes he could take that back. But you know, I wasn't a very good mother to him. I didn't understand him and his needs. I can make up for that now."

"Maybe you can, but _he_ can never make up for drowning Richard," I say.

"The things I know now, from working with you and others like you, I can use to help him," she continues as if I didn't speak. "I can be a proper mother to him. I can guide him. I can help him _curb_ his urges like you do. I can make him perfect, like I made you."

I exhale, frustrated, and grab my phone when it buzzes, slightly glad of the distraction. Deb's sent me a line of question marks. I respond: _I don't know now. Not getting anywhere_.

"Daniel wants to fit in with the world, Dexter, like you do," Evelyn is telling me now. "I can help him to do that."

"You're in danger," I say firmly. I round the armchair to appeal to her. She needs to understand. "You can't save him. Your little boy isn't in there. I don't know if he was ever there. Saxon is a killer, and unlike me, he doesn't have a code or a set of standards that are going to keep you safe. He killed his brother; there's no reason he'll spare you, especially if he thinks you're going to try to lock him up again."

Vogel eyes me unhappily. She doesn't like what I have to say.

"My son isn't going to harm me," she informs me. "I _know_ this. I want you to stay clear, Dexter. I want you to leave us alone. Daniel isn't going to hurt me, and if you leave him alone, he'll leave you. Promise me you won't interfere, Dexter."

"I've made enough promises I can't keep."

"I can't let you hurt my boy."

"I need to take care of him," I say forcefully. "He knows who I am. He knows what my son looks like. He only needs to look up D. Morgan to find out who my sister is, if he doesn't already. This is what you made me for: to kill people like him. I'm leaving Miami soon – I can't leave without doing this. If I don't kill him, I'll always be thinking about it, wondering whether he's killed you, or found Deb-"

"Leaving? What are you talking about?" Vogel is startled.

"I'm leaving," I repeat, although now the details are sketchy even for me, and it's my plan. "I'm getting out of the country, with Hannah. We're starting over. I'll be moving in the next couple of weeks."

The doctor stares at me as though I've spoken another language.

"Where are you going?" she asks. I struggle momentarily.

"We were thinking of going to Argentina," I admit, "but now I'm not sure I want to go that far. It's a long way away from, you know, Deb, and Harrison's brother and sister."

"It's a very long way," Vogel agrees, frowning. "What on Earth has possessed you to want to do this? Is it because you had a fight with Deb?"

"It has nothing to do with Deb," I say, trying not to feel anything about my own words, because they're uncomfortably true. I didn't even pull her name into the decision-making process. "It's Hannah. There's nothing for her here."

"But what about you?" Vogel presses. "Your life is here. Your history, your family... Dexter, this is your hunting ground. Who knows whose toes you'll tread on if you start up this game somewhere else?"

"I'm going to make it work," I insist. "That's what normal people do, when they want to be with someone. They make it work."

"But you're not one of them, Dexter," Vogel disagrees. "You're not normal, and 'make it work' is _not_ what you do when you want to be with someone."

"What are you talking about?" I try to not to get frustrated with her. Why does nobody understand? Why is everyone putting up walls when I broach this subject with them? Why is that making me feel less certain about my own decisions? Their opinions shouldn't matter this much.

"Two months ago you told me you _needed_ Deb in your life," the doctor reminds me. I look away, knowing this isn't going anywhere I'll like. "You _needed_ her. She wanted you out and rather than let her walk away you badgered her, stalked her, drugged her, handcuffed her to a lounge chair and kept her on house arrest in my care until she accepted you back."

"That doesn't count – that was for her own good," I retort. Vogel smiles gently.

"According to you. In any case, I also don't think it counts as 'making it work'."

I'm so confronted by this reminder of how badly I've treated my sister and how confusing I must have made this year for her. One minute, _I need you_ , the next, _I'm leaving you_. I cannot reject it. It's all true. Instead, I get angry.

"Well I must have learned it all from you," I snap. "You're a fine one at 'making it work', too, aren't you? Let's examine your relationship with your son. He's been slicing people's heads open all over the city and leaving brain parts in jars for you, yet to 'make it work' and be with him you're willing to put yourself in danger and send away your best chance of survival – me – and risk him stealing dozens more innocent lives."

She's too shocked by my outburst to respond at first. I continue, letting out the frustration that I should really be aiming at myself.

"And what about _our_ relationship? I was getting along fine, enjoying my peaceful little serial killer life, when suddenly you turned up at Miami Metro and inserted yourself into my life. Nobody made you strike up conversation with me. Nobody made you give me those pictures. You made a choice to tell me everything and change my life forever. You call that 'making it work'? You did to me what I did to Deb. You took away my choice in the manner. You decided you wanted to be in my life, even though Harry was clear that he didn't want you in it-"

"I should have been allowed to meet you from the very start!" Vogel explodes, surprising me. "It was ridiculous of Harry to keep you from me. How is a doctor supposed to treat a patient she's never met? He was a fool. You were lucky to turn out as well as you did."

"You don't get to talk about my father like that," I snarl, immediately protective. "He wasn't perfect but he did the best he could in the circumstances he found himself in. And he was the bravest man I knew."

Straightaway, I feel better about all things. It feels good to defend the honour of someone who deserves it. Harry Morgan deserves it. Vogel doesn't give me any time to revel in this good feeling.

"Harry was a soft-hearted fool, and a coward," she says, coldly. "He saw the signs in you and he did the right thing, coming to me, and he was a good teacher of the skills you needed, but when it came down to it, he was a gutless coward."

I knock her teacup out of her hand. When it smashes with an almost pretty tinkling sound, I wish I'd knocked something bigger, like the nearby table.

"He knew what we were doing, Dexter," she goes on, ignoring the broken china. "There were no illusions between us. We were creating a serial killer out of his son. When we were done with you, you were practically perfect. You had the gift of the Code, a loving family and a sense of duty to them that would help you blend in; you had the intelligence and the skills to be exactly what we'd planned. I mean," she laughs, gesturing at me, "just look at you now. Decades after I met Harry, here you stand, free and functional. Your life and relationships look so real they'd fool anybody-"

"They _are_ real!" I defend. I am reflecting too heavily on her words to really put much force behind the words, however. I recall my father's ghost saying something similar just this morning. Did he mention these same words to me once? Is it lost somewhere in my memory, some adage about gifts and duties?

Vogel doesn't notice my reflection. "You are _perfect_. But Harry got cold feet. He tried to back out. He couldn't see what an achievement you were. He saw the reality and wanted to undo all our work. He was weak."

I ball my fists and try to keep them at my side so I don't strange her while she talks. Harry's suicide was a shock to me when I learned of it several years before, and made me realise how even the strongest of normal people would never be able to understand me. The closest anyone has come is Deb, Harry's daughter. Unlike our father, she has survived me. Barely, it seems, yet she is alive and living a life that others believe in. I feel briefly proud of her.

"Harry wasn't weak," I answer through gritted teeth. "He was right. I am a monster. Whatever you say doesn't change that. Nothing can change that."

"Exactly!" Vogel exclaims, raising her arms. I am taken aback by her agreement, considering she has never voiced this belief previously. She amends, "Psychopaths are not monsters, but you are right, you can't be changed. You are what you are. Harry understood that, once. That's why he brought you to me, to bend you into a mould that might make you functional in society. But then he saw what you _do_ , and changed his mind. He thought he could undo it all, make you normal after all." She stares at me, sort of like Deb did yesterday when I was clearly missing a very obvious truth. "He was going to stop you. He was going to throw away the Code and force you to stop killing. He was going to _contain_ you within yourself. He was going to let you go to waste."

She shakes her head and sets about making a new cup of tea. I watch her, a weird feeling deep in my stomach. What exactly did she just say? I slowly recount what I already knew. Harry saw my kill room and saw the man he'd not been able to catch lying in pieces on my table. He committed suicide with his heart pills – Matthews buried the report so nobody would know about the overdose, to protect Deb and me. I'd done the math and worked out the suicide was a response to his self-hatred for creating _me_ , a monster.

But...

"Harry saw me kill," I repeat, very carefully, "and then told you he was going to change me? Stop me from continuing?"

He'd never brought this up with me. He died too soon after.

Vogel snorts delicately.

"As if he could," she says. "The work was done. But the last thing you needed was that kind of confusion."

"What exactly did he tell you?" I demand, taking her new teacup away. She is calm again now, but startles at my sudden snatch.

"Well, let's see," she murmurs, looking around as she does when she's searching her memory for something long filed away. "He described the scene to me-"

"I was there, I remember it fine. What else did he say?"

"He said, 'I don't think I can live with this'," Vogel repeats dutifully, "and then he turned off the video and told me our relationship was over and he was going to put a stop to everything immediately. He said, 'I'm not going to be around forever, and I can't leave my daughter alone with what I've made'." She smiles fondly. "Imagine if he could see you now. Both of you. Alive, understanding one another."

I can't fully agree with her, that either Deb or I really understand one another like we should considering how well we _know_ each other, but a horrible reality shatters all other thoughts.

"You killed him," I realise. "You killed Harry and set it up to look like he suicided."

She cocks her head to the side and I wait desperately for her to rebuke my accusation and prove me wrong. The woman who created me – how could it be that she did such a thing to the man who moulded me?

"Dexter," she says, and I wait anxiously, hopefully, "he was going to change you. What else could I do?"

As I back away I drop her teacup and hot tea splashes up my leg. Beneath my jeans I feel it scald me but I do not react to this pain. I am overwhelmed by the facts that slam into me now. Vogel killed Harry. Harry was murdered. Harry never gave up on me. Harry never left Deb and me. Harry loved us.

I feel his presence, and I hear his soft words: "I don't want you to ever doubt that last one, Dexter."

"You..." I have so many things to blurt out, but most seem redundant. You killed him. You're a murderer. You lied to me. You lied to my sister. You betrayed my family. "You let me believe my own father gave up on me. You let me spend _years_ believing he killed himself because of me. I nearly handed myself in over this. A decent man died while I dealt with it. And Deb nearly killed me over it."

I think of Matthews, telling me the truth on the golf course. I think of Doakes, locked in that cabin, and me, sharing my crushing guilt with him. I think of Deb, drinking beer and eating steak at my apartment while I prepared to hand myself in to her before circumstances took my opportunity away, and I think of her again in that car, not long ago at all, emptiness in her eyes as she asked me for that same truth.

A truth that wasn't truth at all.

"I couldn't know they would rule it a suicide," Evelyn contends. "It was gentle. It was necessary. He was going to end everything. I did right. The path back from killing was going to be more painful for you than this, I assure you."

"Necessary?" I can barely breathe. I take deep gulps of air. "Harry rang Matthews the day before he died. He asked him to look out for Deb and me. That was to keep you from us, wasn't it? He knew you wouldn't let it go."

"We argued before he left that day," Vogel sniffs, unaffected. She eyes my split eyebrow. "Nothing like the way you and your sister argue, of course. He said I was to keep away from his children, and that he would use whatever remained of his connections to make sure you two were protected from me." She laughs lightly again. I hate her so much. I can't believe I pitied her only a few minutes ago. "Like _I_ was the threat to your existence, Dexter! He was the one trying to tear you down."

It all makes so much sense and yet no sense at all. I can't stay standing. I stumble to the floor, grasping furniture. I understand now what I did to Deb yesterday. I dissolved her world. I know because it's happening to me now. My vision blurs and the room swims around me, while the sounds become distorted by a brain too overloaded to process its information properly. _Harry was murdered, Harry was murdered, Vogel killed Harry, Vogel killed Harry_. It's all I can think right now. I don't know how long I stay like this, crouched on the carpet waiting for my senses to come back to me, but when they do, I find Evelyn's worried face right before mine.

I cannot help but react. I snatch for the nearby shards of broken teacup and slash upwards. Only at the last instant before contact do I recall the personal relationship I have with this woman and I pull back. The makeshift weapon still slices through her skin, but through the soft skin over her jaw instead of her throat.

She cries out and falls away; I dive after her and pin her down with one hand. I feel immense disappointment with the welling of blood that my decidedly shallow wound has given her. The desire to cut into her, deeper, to see red liquid pumping in waves from open blue veins and driven by a frantic old heart, is almost overpowering. My weapon is tiny and it cuts me almost as much as it has her, but in my practised hands I can make it dangerous. I can kill her. I want to. I see her blood running down the backs of my eyelids whenever I blink.

There is a knock at the door. I glance back quickly. We are out of sight of the front windows, but if someone were to walk around the side... There is another knock, more insistent.

"Mom? Are you home?"

Saxon. His voice travels clearly through the locked door to where we wait, staring into each other's eyes. Vogel is frightened by my turn of temper but I see hope light her narrow eyes at the sound of her son's voice. I imagine that light going out like the light must have gone out in Harry's eyes when his heart gave out under the load of too much medication. I know Saxon is my target, and that if he catches me murdering his mother he'll have every reason to jump in and slaughter me, and that I should keep Vogel alive so I can use her as bait to catch her psychopathic son, and that Vogel may not even fit the Code, but I am struggling to control myself. Revenge, for me, is as powerful a motivator as it is for any normal person.

"Don't do it, Dexter," Harry urges from the back of my mind and from beside me. "Whether Saxon suspects something now or not, whether or not he comes inside and catches you, he'll know this was you. Think of everything you have to lose to him if you take away his mother. Besides, you left the station saying you were going straight home; even if you head there immediately after cleaning up here, Jamie won't be able to account for your whereabouts for a whole two hour window. You're angry; you're passionate. You're going to make a mistake. Deb is back at work but she mightn't be able to save you from this. Rule number one?"

"Don't get caught," I mutter, conflicted. I slowly let up the pressure on Vogel's collarbone, making sure she sees the shard that I still have pointed at her, ready to rip her open. She nods an understanding. She won't move or speak or do anything stupid. I take my phone from my pocket and unlock it. My text conversation with Deb is on the screen. I open the options and hit call.

Vogel's breaths are short and fast and I want to end them as I hear the phone connect with Deb's and start to ring. Each ring is eternal. Saxon knocks again after the third ring.

"I can see your car, Mom," Saxon calls out. "It's not like you're into long walks through Miami, so I know you're in there."

Vogel's eyes flicker towards the front of the house. She's hoping her son will get suspicious and tear the door down and save her. I honestly doubt he cares for her enough to do that, but I don't doubt he'll be mad with me for taking away something he perceives as being his. I press the sharp point of the broken cup to the old woman's pumping jugular. She recognises the threat and says nothing.

The phone rings a fourth time. My forehead and hands are beginning to sweat with anxiety and indecision. My instincts and conscience are fighting for dominance. My humanity demands revenge for my slain father and my inner killer instructs me to take the life I want to take. The ghost of my father, however, begs me to stop and think, exactly the words he might have used to help fix me if Vogel hadn't killed him before he could. He reminds me that Vogel doesn't fit the Code. He reminds me that mercy is righteous. He urges me to think of everything I stand to lose if I anger Saxon.

"It's Deb; you know what to do."

Message bank. I cannot contain the primal noise of frustration that escapes me at the sound of that stupid fucking beep.

"Fuck, Deb," I whisper, lost. I stare down at Vogel. I could just kill her. I should hang up first, though. Deb won't appreciate an incriminating voice message featuring the sound effects of a murder. "I need you. Answer your fucking phone. I need you to talk me down."

I hang up before I can confess what I'm going to do or, worse, actually do it. I quietly place the phone down on the floor beside my knee. I return my hand to Evelyn Vogel's collarbone, scrunching my fingers around the collar of her blouse.

"Dexter," she breathes, appealing to a humanity she doesn't even think I possess, "don't. Please, don't. Just think of the Code. You can't kill me. I don't fit the Code."

"Neither did Harry," I hiss back. "You murdered my father, and left Deb and me orphans. All in the name of your little science project." I bring her face close to mine. She's trembling. "You say you created me but you have no idea what, or who, I am. You don't understand me. You don't understand my drives. You clearly don't understand what Harry Morgan meant to me. You might be right," I add, softly, ignoring Saxon's angry thumping on the door, "you might not fit the Code. But I've strayed before, and I intend to stray again today. You killed my father and you turned me into something he resented. I'm going to kill you because I _want_ to."

Her pale lips quiver and form a silent plea: _No_... Outside, Saxon loses patience and shouts, "Open this door, you old bitch! Open this door or I'll fucking kill you."

Vogel's eyes close in defeat. Her saviour isn't here to save her. I keep my eyes glued to the phone. By now Deb could have gotten over the impulse to ignore my call, given in to the curiosity of what I wanted and listened to the message. She could be calling me back right now. Or now. Or even right now, if she delayed that extra second. I keep waiting for her to call, to save me, but the phone sits still and silent. I accept the inevitable. I turn the shard in my hand to better position it for this very significant kill. My father shakes his head, displeased with my decision. I love him and I appreciate his guidance but right now an imagined ghost and a half-functioning conscience aren't enough to stop me. I need my real-life conscience. Too bad I didn't consider Deb's many roles in my life before fucking her over. If I hadn't, she might be willing to help. I spare the phone a final glance. Nothing. It's over. Vogel knows it, too.

"And I'm going to enjoy it, too."

I let go.


	3. Chapter 3

It's all over. I have no other choice. I've given myself over. I feel relieved, but also helpless. I lunge forward with my makeshift weapon aimed at Vogel's throat. It'll rip her windpipe open and spill her blood all over both of us. A messy, uncontrolled end for the neat, manipulative monster that made _my_ life such a mess.

With only a millisecond to spare, a vibration against my knee makes my heart leap, and I throw my weight to the side. Instead of slicing through Vogel's neck my hand slams heavily into the carpet beside her head, driving the sharp edge of broken china straight into my palm. Both Vogel and I cry out, she in fright and I in unexpected pain. No doubt Saxon hears us from outside. But I don't think on this, or the terrible risk I've taken in attacking without gloves and without my usual weapons, or the worrying blood stain in the carpet that will prove I attacked her if she tries to take this further. My whole body and mind is focussed only on the phone that is ringing beside my leg.

Twice it slips from my bloody grasp as I snatch for it desperately. Each time I miss my anxiety jumps, doubles, and when I see the name and photo that come up as caller ID I cannot possibly get the phone into my hand quick enough. It's a lifeline and it's going to save me from this terrible mistake I'm determined to make.

"Mom?" Saxon is still there, sounding less deranged and less certain than before. "Is someone there with you?" I imagine him leaning to look at the road in the pause that follows. My bloody fingers finally close over the iPhone and I stumble to my feet, terrified and desperate and trapped, both by Saxon and by my own internal conflicts. "Dexter? I can see your car."

 _Kill him, kill them both,_ something inside begs. I hesitate, control spiralling away from me. The vibration of the phone calls some of it back.

"Get out, Dexter!" my father's voice urges me. "Now's not the time. Face Saxon on your own terms."

Fuck, fuck. I race from the room while Vogel tearfully struggles to her feet. The phone rings again but my wet red fingertips at first won't get enough traction to answer the call. At moments like these you regret giving up buttons for touch screens. I change hands as I fall against the back door of Vogel's place. Panic rises in my chest as technology and blood wall me off from my conscience and better judgement and my fingers slip from the door handle. Vogel is moving towards the front now, calling to her son in a shaky voice. The Vogels are going to catch me. I'll have to fight Saxon here, unprepared to do so, and I'll... I... The thoughts won't finish. I'm overwhelmed. Again, I can't breathe. I'm walled in, trapped, a caged animal.

All at once the door and phone both unlock and I burst outside, gasping for air as I bring the phone to my ear.

"Dexter, what the fuck?" Deb demands, insensitive to my ordeal. Her abrasive tone is like honey down a sore throat. I close my eyes and collapse against the door I shove shut behind me. I'm panting but I can feel myself coming back together. All my particles were lost in the dark but she's gravity, and she's drawing it all back to my centre. "I tell you I don't want to talk to you and you leave me creepy-as-all-shit voice messages?"

"Deb," I breathe, "you have no idea how good it is to hear your voice."

It's the best thing ever. Inside, behind the door, I know Vogel has reached the front door.

"Daniel," she implores loudly, so he'll hear her. "Daniel, I'm sorry."

Even over the pounding pulse of blood through my ears, my keen hearing picks up the sounds of her unlocking and opening the front door. He'll be inside in less than a second. He'll see what I've done. She can point in the direction I've gone only a second after that. He's faster than she is. He can be out here in five seconds. I keep down, below sight of any windows, and slide along the wall and around towards the front. I just need to reach my car.

"Well, listen to my voicemail recording if that's all you want. I don't want to talk to you."

I recognise the rebuttal and dismissal and know Deb's going to hang up. There is no point begging or asking her to listen. She will only listen if I'm upfront, which is the least of what she deserves.

"Deb, I'm at Vogel's," I tell her, keeping my voice down and continuing along the wall. Vogel and her son are still inside. She can barely speak for shaking. He can't get a coherent explanation from her. That's bought me precious seconds. I wipe my bleeding hand on the hem of my shirt. The wound is deep. I'm glad Harry pressed me to leave. With my hand this messed up, I can't be confident in taking on Saxon. "I just tried to kill her."

Deb is silent on the other end of the line for a long moment. At first I'm not sure what she's doing, but faintly I hear the sounds of the office disappear and gather she's hurried into the lift to hide from eavesdroppers.

"You what?" she asks, disbelieving. "Did you... Is she dead?"

She's too shocked to be judgemental. She hasn't even asked why I might make such an attempt. I'm not sure I want her to. I don't want to have to tell her what I now know. But I'll have to.

"No, you just saved her life," I answer quietly. "For now."

"Don't do it, Dexter," Deb says immediately. "Especially now you've told me. I can't have another murder on my conscience."

It's easy to forget how heavily my acts weigh on her. She carries my conscience _and_ her own inside her. My cut hand throbs as I change my phone back into it and use the other to feel in my pockets for my keys. I'm over halfway to the street front. Once I get to the corner of the house I'll be in sight of the front window and I'll need to bolt. Underneath a window I pause, a fleeting idea of bursting through the glass and taking the Vogels by violent surprise pushing Deb's voice to the back of my mind. Suddenly I can ignore the pain in my hand and I wonder whether I really can take Saxon on right now. If I can incapacitate him I can kill the doctor easily enough. The darkness in me pushes me to give it real consideration. It could be done, it could work.

"Dex?"

Deb's voice reminds me of the holes in my plan, the people who can be hurt if I slip up and let Saxon kill me. I begin to shake with indecision. Control slides again...

"Are you still there? Please don't do it."

I could hang up on her. I've done it before. I could do as the darkness desires and let the relief fill me from all sides. Later I could call her back and apologise convincingly and offer her a variation of the truth that will not really appease her but which she'll accept because there won't be anything else to take. It's what I usually do. It's what she's used to, what she expects. It's what we do.

"I need to see you." I exhale shakily, coming to a decision I don't usually make, and wipe my sweating brow with the back of my hand. I shuffle the rest of the way to the front of the house. I can see my car from here. "I'm going to get out of here. Please say you'll meet me, so I have somewhere to go other than back here."

Deb is quiet for a while as she deliberates, and as she crosses the foyer of Miami Metro. I shove away all thoughts of getting my vengeance today just as I hear the back door of Vogel's house slam open. Like a bullet shot from a gun, I take off in the direction of my car. Once he rounds the side of the house, I know Saxon spots me and gives chase. I'm more desperate than he, though, and I reach my car with seconds to spare. The keys slide into the ignition on the first stab in its general direction and then my vehicle is on and in gear. In my rear vision mirror I see Saxon race to his own car. I bring the phone back to my ear.

"What just happened?" she asks suspiciously, referring to the odd sounds of air rushing by the mouthpiece during my escape. I hear her car door open and close.

"Listen, Saxon could be following me," I tell Deb before she can make her mind up. "I'm going to call Jamie and tell her I've got a flat tire, and that you're coming to get Harrison. Then I'll meet you wherever you want."

"Great, so you'll lead some psycho straight to us? What's Saxon even doing there?"

"I'm going to lose him." I recall that I never told Deb who Saxon really is. The lies are catching up with me. I should have just told her straight up. "Please, Deb? Everything's..." I think of _everything_ and it makes my hands shake on the wheel. Vogel. Harry. Saxon. Hannah. The Deputy Marshal. Argentina. Deb. It's too much right now. I clench my fists tightly around the steering wheel. "It's all fucked up, Deb. I need to see you."

She sighs loudly. She's not happy.

"I'll get Harrison," she agrees reluctantly. "And I'll meet you at Amory's Roses in half an hour."

"Where?" I frown, certain I know that name from somewhere. My sister names an irritated noise.

"The fucking florist where Rita got the flowers for your fucking wedding, dipshit," she replies, and suddenly I can picture the large shop beside the main entrance of the shopping centre local to the house I lived in with Rita.

"Alright, thanks," I say, and hang up. I don't tell her that she probably just saved my life. I don't tell her that she just brought me out of my own darkness using only the magic of her voice. I don't tell her I love her like I love being alive. More, even. I don't tell her how proud I am of her for being the better Morgan, the stronger sibling, for coming to my aid even though I don't deserve it. I don't tell her a lot of things. I assume she just knows.

I get a text from Hannah, asking me when I'll be home. I don't want to get into this with her and I don't want to worry her, but I briefly think on her soft face and how confused and loud her thoughts must be, sitting alone in a silent house where she isn't welcome and after a full day and night of being ignored. I text back quickly, telling her I'm stopping into the shopping centre to collect Harrison – sort of true – but I'm not sure when I'll be home. I add that I love her. Hannah needs to be told. I can't ever expect she'll just know.

I call Jamie. I thank her profusely for having Harrison overnight and all day continuously without notice. I should have called her hours ago but she isn't upset. She says Deb called her last night and told her not to expect me back until today.

"She said you guys had a massive fight," Jamie reports, a little uncertainly, worried of traipsing over sensitive ground. "She said you were both alright but were really shaken up and didn't want Harrison to see you like that. It must have been big, huh? She sounded upset on the phone. And you've needed the whole day to clear your head."

Deb is a fucking genius. Quickly, she is becoming better at all my talents than I am. She must have come up with this after I fell asleep last night. She never used to be a good liar but now it is natural to her. I am at once impressed and depressed by this development. I don't change; I don't want her to, either.

I tell Jamie my flat tire story. I add that my spare is also down, so I don't sound too pathetic for calling roadside assistance.

"So Deb will be there shortly to pick up the little guy," I say, "and she'll swing by me and wait with me for the roadside assistance guys."

"Are you two alright today?" Jamie checks warily. "Is that a good idea?"

"We're fine," I decide. "I stayed over her place last night and we talked through some of our issues." An exaggeration, certainly, because we didn't talk at all while I stayed over, and the talking we _did_ do was during our epic argument, in which she did most of the talking, and even that was less talking and more shouting. "And I worked with her all day today." And avoided her.

I drive aimlessly and without attention-grabbing haste. I keep an eye on the traffic behind me but don't notice Saxon's car. A few times I think I spot it, but then the offending car will turn off or disappear from view. I slowly relax.

I make my way indirectly to the shopping centre where I used to do groceries with Rita and our children. I haven't been here since she died. It looks the same. It needs a repaint. I drive around the block to pull into the back car park, closest to the grocer I used to frequent. It's automatic.

It's not very busy at this time of day so I am able to park very close to the entrance. I sit inside the car for a few minutes, using these few minutes of unrushed calm to clean myself up. I change back into the other shirt. Both are bloodstained but today's is worse.

I'm so close to Deb that I can feel her gravity – everything seems alright now. My thoughts are returning to their usual organised, logical state, and I consider buying a new shirt when I go inside. I fish my first aid kit out and dress the wound on my hand. The tear is jagged, like the broken edge of my foolish weapon, and it's going to scar, but the bleeding has slowed down considerably. When it's clean and bandaged, I wipe down my grimy red steering wheel and roll all of the bloodstained wipes up inside a plastic bag. I close my eyes and lean my head back against the headrest, taking this one second to find my calm centre. In a couple of minutes I'll be with my sister and my son and we'll be a normal, nice family out shopping. That image calms the rough edges of my human emotions.

I get out of the car, lock it and head for the doors, blinking in the warm sunlight. A pair of women in their fifties stand around a bin smoking. I smile at them, even though I dislike their habit, and dump my bag of bloody shirt and dressings. They ignore me. I start inside, dodging trolleys that stream out of the automatic doors, and instinctually glance back once.

Saxon is getting out of his car.

At once I stride into the shopping centre, thoughts firing wildly. How did he manage to follow me without me spotting him? What does he hope to achieve by following me here? What will he do if he catches up? My family is inside – what will he do to them?

I cannot explain to myself how this has happened. All I know is that I've led a violent murderer straight to my precious family, and I need to get them out. I keep my head down as I walk quickly through the centre. It's a sleepy sort of place, this shopping centre, busy but without hustle or energy. There are people and trolleys everywhere but nobody's in any hurry. I blend easily. I allow myself only one glance back. Way back, near the entrance, Saxon has followed me in. His hawk-like, intense eyes are scanning the crowd for me. He can't possibly know where I'll go from here, but I'm certain he saw me at the bins. He's seen the shirt I'm in – he'll have noticed I changed in the car. He's looking for this peach colour. I look around; no one else is wearing it.

I pass a clothing store. The shop assistant is distracted with a young mother, both cooing over the baby in the pram. When all eyes are diverted I slide a brown jacket from its hanger and keep walking as though nothing is amiss. No one notices. I keep it clutched in front of me so Saxon can't see it. I add a fedora to my collection at the next store and then, when the floor plan branches off in two different directions, I slide between two groups of shoppers and veer left. For one second, the colour of my shirt should be clear to Saxon. Then I blend into the crowd of people heading down the left wing of the shopping centre, shrug on the jacket despite the warm weather and fit the hat onto my head. I sidle out of the group and into a bookshop.

I pull a new release hardback from the shelf and pleasantly engage the teenage girl stacking shelves in conversation about this author. I keep an eye on the stream of lethargic shoppers outside the shop. When I expect Saxon to pass, he doesn't. I begin to doubt my plan – what if he's on to my tactics, what if he spotted Deb and Harrison and went after them instead, what if he just didn't notice my ploy? – and snap the book shut, ready to go back out and look, but then he hurries past, dodging through random groups of people and craning his neck to look ahead for me. As soon as he's past, I thank the girl for her time, hand her back the book and tell her I just spotted my sister going the wrong way.

I check that Saxon is still heading in the opposite direction before setting off down the right-hand wing of the centre towards the main entrance. I can't count on him continuing like this for long. Soon enough he'll get suspicious with my lack of visibility and he'll double back. I make my way to Amory's Roses.

It's a large store for a florist, roomy. I haven't been here since Rita was pregnant with Harrison. I duck inside and spot Harrison immediately, counting flowers in buckets on the floor near the counter, where his aunt is speaking with the florist. She notices me as I approach the little boy we both love. I scoop him up and he looks at me oddly.

"Daddy, you look funny," he informs me, touching my eyebrow. I smile to let him know there's nothing for him to worry about. My problems should not be my son's problems. I straighten and pull my wallet from my pocket. Deb has her credit card out already; I lean closer, squeezing Harrison in between us, and press mine into the florist's hands. The older woman behind the counter smiles uncertainly, but a glance at each card shows the same surname. Suddenly I'm not some weird beat-up hippie grabbing a customer's kid and jumping in on her purchase. A man and woman of similar age, with a cute little child – the florist makes the obvious assumption and lays Deb's card down on the countertop. Deb smiles back tightly.

"What's with the stupid hat, dufus?" she asks me in a low voice while the card is swiped. She raises her hand towards my face and flicks something hanging from the fedora. The tag. Discreetly, I scratch my hairline and tuck the tag inside the hat. I keep the brim low to hide my split eyebrow and to shadow my bruising. "Wannabe. You look like a tool."

"Angel wears one."

"Yeah, but he pulls it off," Deb retorts snidely.

The florist hands me the receipt and a pen and eyes us in confusion. We don't talk to each other like a couple does. It's my turn to force a smile. I sign and Deb grabs her bundle of white flowers. The florist wishes us a nice day and I shift Harrison to my other arm so I can wind my nearest one around Deb's middle. She tenses angrily but doesn't shrug me off because Harrison's there. I lean close like I'm kissing her ear. I'm not.

"Saxon followed me," I murmur into her hair. She keeps walking. "I think I've thrown him off but keep your eyes open and be ready to run. You got your gun?"

She nods once. She's irritated with me but understands that the problem of a stalking predator must be dealt with before she can afford to be mad.

"For the record, this doesn't count as buying me flowers," Deb mentions coolly as I steer her out of the shopping centre. I look around for her car. This main car park is busier than the one I parked in.

"I'm sure I owe you much more than a bunch of flowers," I answer, and she laughs humourlessly.

"Oh, yeah," she agrees, wholeheartedly. She pulls to the left and I go with her, letting her go only to grab her sunglasses off her head. I slide them onto my own face, hoping they will further distort my features from Saxon's prying eyes, should he try looking for me out here. I look around casually, as though watching for reversing cars. I see no Saxon. I see no one paying us any mind at all. As I'd hoped, I look like any trendy hipster out buying flowers with his hot wife and adorable son.

Deb's been driving a nice car ever since she became lieutenant. She unlocks it and loads the flowers into the backseat while I buckle Harrison into his booster seat beside them. Satisfied, I shut his door and take one last look around. Nothing. I climb into the passenger seat and Deb starts the car.

I keep my eyes sharp as she navigates us out of the car park. It is not until we are lined up with the other cars at the exit to the main road that I see Saxon burst out of the main doors. I twist in my seat to watch him through the back window. Harrison grins at me, unperturbed by my oddness.

Saxon doesn't know Deb's car, or if he does, he isn't looking for it and doesn't see it. He stands amidst the currents of people milling in and out of the centre and looks across the car park with his piercing eyes. He looks once in our direction but we're just one in a line of cars, and we're a while away. He returns his gaze to the crowd that disperses across the tar-sealed field of parked cars. A gap in traffic and we're moving. I don't stop watching Saxon until we enter the road and he's obscured from my view by the shopping centre itself as we pull away. I exhale heavily, tension melting away, and turn back to the front. Even if he did see us, which he didn't, and even if he bolts back to his car, we'll be too far ahead for him to track us this time.

"Thanks for meeting me," I say now. I glance over at Deb, hoping she hears all the other things I'm not saying that I mean within the words I _am_ saying. She makes a 'pfft' sound and shoots me a dangerous look. Turning her angry eyes back to the road, she reaches over and gropes at my face to snatch back her sunglasses. She shoves them onto her nose.

"Like you gave me a choice," she comments darkly. "It was meet you or let you go ahead with it, wasn't it?"

I hesitate. Uh, yeah, kind of. I peel the jacket off, turn in my seat again and smile at Harrison.

"Hey, buddy," I say cheerily, squeezing his foot affectionately. I avoid thinking on how close I just brought danger to this precious soul. "How was your night? Were you good for Jamie?"

"I'm _always_ good for Jamie," he replies, rolling his eyes theatrically. I wonder who he has learned this from. "We played snap and I won _five times_. She's not very good at it," he notes, and adds, kindly, "but she tries really hard."

"That's a very nice thing to say," I admire, loving that my son can be innocent enough not to notice his nanny is letting him win and mature enough to forgive and excuse the failings of others. Maybe this is normal for kids his age; otherwise I assume he's inherited this mixture from Deb. They're not blood but he's had more exposure to her than he did to his own mother. Deb went three decades without joining the dots and noticing what I am, and no matter what I do, she finds a way around it to still love me on the other side. It could be too soon to speak on this latest issue, whether she'll still love me on the other side of me announcing I'm moving to Argentina, but I infer from this development (me being in her car) that things are on track. In any case, it's a beautiful trait that I'm pleased to see mirrored in my son.

We drive for a while in companionable silence. Harrison is happy to just sit and stare out the window. He is glad to be with us. Deb staunchly ignores me but I can feel the questions building inside her. I've kept her in the dark too long on too many things. Once Harrison is out of earshot I'll have a lot of explaining to do. Until then, I enjoy their presence. They are part of me. Deb is my whole past and everything decent about me. Harrison is my future, my legacy, all that will remain of me one day.

Our surroundings become unfamiliar as Debra keeps driving.

"Where are we going?" I ask eventually. Deb gives me another look. I'm missing something once again.

"To see Mommy," Harrison pipes up. Startled by his unexpected answer, I glance between them.

"Mommy?" I repeat. I look at my sister. "As in, Rita?"

"Yes, Dexter, that woman you married and who gave birth to your kid," she responds in a sweet voice that doesn't match her expression. "I'm not talking about the poisonous weed you're keeping at my place. That's not his mother."

I don't bother arguing. I'll lose, and I don't have the energy anyway. I indicate the flowers. Until now I hadn't even thought on why Deb would be visiting that out-of-her-way shopping centre, or why she'd be in a florist of all places. Now I begin to understand.

"So those are..."

"For her grave, yes." Deb frowns at the road. "They were her favourite. Remember?"

I look back at the flowers. I recognise them as the same as the ones at Rita's funeral. Deb ordered them. I can't for the life of me recall what they're called. Hannah would know.

I feel slightly confronted with the notion of revisiting my wife's death while I have all these other issues so close to the surface but I say nothing else as Deb finds a parking space. Deb takes my hat from me as I let Harrison out and she puts it on his head instead. We walk together in silence across the open cemetery with Harrison racing ahead of us. I don't call him back. There is nowhere for danger to hide here. He meets us at Rita's grave. We arrange the flowers carefully and lovingly. I fight against the blood red memory of Rita in the bathtub.

Harrison has brought a colouring book and pencil case from Deb's car and props himself against his mother's headstone to colour a picture for her. He's too young to remember her, or how she loved him, and he's too young to understand why we're here. But I remember her. I remember how she loved him, and his siblings, and _me_. It was because she loved me that she lost her life.

"Is there a message in bringing me here?" I ask Deb in a low voice, depressed. "Something else I just don't get?"

"No," she answers pointedly. "This isn't about you at all. I had planned to come here before you called." She folds her arms and wanders away. I follow her past a few rows of headstones and we stop and turn back to watch my son. "Alright, it's a little bit about you. I've been thinking about her all day, and a lot of last night."

I don't want to delve into this so I stay quiet, and we both watch Harrison as he concentrates on keeping within the lines. There is so much else we need to talk about, and this might be our only opportunity to talk alone. I start before I can take the easy way out.

"Saxon is Vogel's son," I tell her. Deb turns her head slowly to look at me in amazement. "She thought he was dead. I accidentally discovered him for her when I was investigating Zach's murder. He's a psychopath, like me. Well," I amend, "not really like me. He kills whoever he wants. He killed his little brother when he was only fourteen."

"Shit. Is that why you were at Vogel's?"

"Kind of." My palm itches beneath the tight bandaging and I rub it on my leg to alleviate the sensation. "She messaged me at work to say she'd spoken to Saxon and to hint that I shouldn't kill him."

"So you tried to kill her instead?" Deb is confused. I have to correct her but I don't want to. I don't want to see the hurt and betrayal in her hazel-eyes-like-mine, even if it's aimed at someone else. After yesterday, I don't think I can handle seeing those emotions in her for a long while. I'm not sure she is strong enough to handle them again so soon, either.

"No, that was..." I can't. "That was something else. Something really-"

"Fucked-up," Deb fills in. "Yeah, you said. What was it?"

"Can I tell you that at the end? It's too big. It's too raw." I look away, waiting for her to fight me on it, to demand to know now, but maybe she sees how I'm struggling with it, because she doesn't push. Or maybe she just doesn't have much fight left after our big one yesterday. "She thinks Saxon can be changed, channelled like I was. She doesn't think he belongs on my table."

"But you disagree."

"He killed his own brother."

"So did you."

True. "I didn't want to. I had to, to save you." I shake my head. "Saxon likes what he does, and he does what he likes. It's too late for him. He'll keep killing as long as he's left at large. He's perfect for my table. Besides that, he's a threat to me and mine. He's got to be put down." I watch Harrison turn to the headstone to show it which picture he's chosen. He's seen people come here and talk with their eyes on the headstones. With nothing else physically visible, he assumes the stone is what now represents his mother in this space. A graveyard must be a confusing place for a small child. "I once made the mistake of letting a killer live a day too long and he destroyed my family. I won't do that again."

Deb is silent for a long while.

"That's what I've been thinking about today," she admits eventually. "I've been thinking how badly hurt people who love you seem to invariably get. Everyone who ever loved you is dead, Dexter, bar a few of us. And half of them you killed yourself. And I've been thinking," she goes on, uncertainly, "that a lot of those people were people _I_ loved too. When you married Rita and you had these beautiful kids, you weren't the only one getting a family. I loved Rita, too, you know. She was my sister-in-law, and I love Astor and Cody. But because of you, they're all out of my life. And all I've got left is you two," she gestures between Harrison and me, "and yesterday you announce I've got to give that up, too?"

"Deb, that's on the backburner for now," I promise her. Suspicious eyes slant up at me, not sure whether to listen. "After yesterday... And after today. I have too much to fix up here before I go anywhere. I haven't had a chance to speak to Hannah about it all yet, but we need a change of plans. Something more realistic and sustainable."

"Too much to fix?" Deb repeats hollowly. "Like, fix me? I'm not an imaginary flat tire. You can't patch me up and send me on my way and expect regular performance."

"Not you. Us. I've done a lot of damage and I regret it."

Deb scoffs. I rub my palm a little harder on my jeans. It hurts to put pressure on it but the bandage is so itchy. I think back on the moment under Vogel's window in which I was able to ignore the pain. It was the same moment that I considered hanging up on Deb and turning my back on the lifeline she offered. I could do that now, I realise, but after hardly any thought at all I know I don't want to. I'd rather the sore hand if it means I have my sister on my side.

"I love you, Deb. I don't need to tell you that."

"No, you choose not to tell me that, unless you're sucking up," she corrects. I frown.

"But you know, don't you?"

"I..." She hesitates. She doesn't want to agree with me. She's still mad. But she relents. "I know you love me."

It isn't enough. I must make her understand.

"I had Evelyn pinned down and a broken fucking teacup in my hand," I describe to Deb, curling my hands into the shapes they'd held during the scene I'm recalling. She watches in disturbed fascination. "I was just about to rip her throat open and let her bleed out over my hands. Nothing I thought of was enough to stop me – not the Code, not the risk of getting caught, not the chance that Saxon would find out it was me. The only way I could stop myself was to call you. And you didn't answer. And that was like my whole world went black and there was no way back to the light, until you called back, just as I was about to..." I don't say but I still make the motion. Deb catches my hand to still me, disgusted. She keeps hold of the hand. "I needed you and you saved me."

"I won't be able to get to your local florist quite so quickly when you're living it up in Argentina," she reminds me. I shake my head, wanting to move away from that topic. It's going to happen but until there are solid plans there's no point in either of us worrying about it. "I was your best man, Dex. I helped you pick Rita's engagement ring. I burned down a church with you so you wouldn't go to jail. And in the end I'm getting tossed aside for _Hannah_ and fucking Argentina?"

I brought up a lot of issues yesterday, and naturally, not all of them have settled yet. I try to be patient. My saint isn't perfect.

"Listen, I'm not tossing you anywhere," I insist. "I was an idiot to make plans like that without thinking them through, especially where they affected you and us. Everything you said yesterday helped me realise that, and what happened today was proof that I can't exist _and_ survive without you." I meet her wandering gaze and hold it. Again, I am in awe of her eyes and how they are like mine. "Without you I am just the monster created in that storage container, destined only to destroy and ruin and eventually get caught, bringing down all the good people around me. I don't want to be that. I want to be the _other_ Dexter, the side of me that takes care, protects the people I love and has a valid place in society. I want to be your brother."

She is still holding my hand but she doesn't say anything back. I realise it is still my turn, and there is more I need to say.

"I want to be your brother for always," I elaborate. "I want to keep trying to be a decent one." I swallow. "I want us to stop this circle where I wreck everything and then come back and pretend to fix it and then pull it all back down again."

Deb swallows, too. She entwines her fingers with mine, looking at my hand instead of my face to hide her swelling emotions.

"I want that, too," she whispers eventually. Her lip quivers. "You just confuse me, is all. I'm scared, Dex-"

I can't stand to hear her say that, so I pull her tight against me and hold her close. Her handbag swings against my side. She's so tall that our chins sit perfectly on the other's shoulder. We're made for this, I know it. She was made to be my sister and I was made to be her brother.

"I'm scared of losing you, and having nothing," she finishes. I stroke her hair.

"Me, too," I admit. "Today I thought I had lost you forever. I thought I'd really wrecked things between us. I thought you weren't going to answer and that's when I nearly lost _me_. It was the worst feeling. It was like after La Guerta, when you hated me. Everything was spiralling away. I need you. You aren't only my sister. Without you I'm devoid – of conscience, forgiveness, self-control, better judgement..."

Deb laughs in genuine amusement this time, and pushes away from me to be able to look me in the face. Her fingers are still locked into mine.

"Self-control and better judgement? You get those things out of being around me?" She smiles her lop-sided, slightly sarcastic smile. "No wonder there's never any left for me."

I smile back. Admittedly, she isn't known for these things I draw from her. She's better known for her trail of ill-considered and self-terminated relationships with inappropriate men and her impulsive outbursts of obscene language.

"I just mean, you make me better," I clarify. "I can never be good, but with you I can be _alright_. And it's because of you that I can be someone _alright_ enough to be a dad to Harrison." I glance at my son adoringly. "I'll never deserve you but I'm grateful that you're willing to forget that from time to time."

Her smile twists into a knowing smirk. My phone buzzes against my hip and I slide it out of the pocket to look at the screen. I can't tell what it says. Deb's smile drops and she grabs the phone from me.

"Shit, Dex," she mutters, turning the iPhone over in her hand. The blood has dried and formed a dirty rust-coloured coating over the screen and case. "You can't even read the fucking screen." She squints through the blood but can't work out who the message came from. "What the fuck happened at Vogel's?"

I take the phone back and pocket it slowly, prolonging the inevitable. I check on my boy. He's perfectly entertained. There's nothing more to do except tell her. Or avoid it.

"I don't want to tell you," I confess. "It's fucked."

"You think I can't handle it?" she challenges, her free hand on her hip. I sigh.

"I couldn't."

She considers this for a while.

"Let's run with the assumption that I'm a little harder than you are," she suggests. "Try me."

I stare at her, scared of breaking her again so soon after I destroyed her yesterday. She is tough, I know this much, but tough enough for this? I pull on the hand entwined with my own so that she has to step close again and I hug her tightly. If I tell her gently, while I've got her this close, maybe I can hold her together? I can't let Deb fall apart again. She's gravity for me but it doesn't work the same in reverse.

"Vogel killed Harry," I whisper into her ear. My own ear is pressed against the side of her head, and, faintly, I imagine I can hear something fragile and innocent break inside her. It sounds like Vogel's fine china teacup when I smashed it. Deb is still for so long. When she moves, she does not pull away. Instead she sifts through her handbag. I wonder whether she's looking for tissues.

Then there's something cold against my temple. I lean away a little and my stomach twists. Deb has her gun pressed to the side of my head. She shifts back, too, so I can look her in the eyes. I can't tell from their expression whether she means to do what her weapon is implying. I'm sure she wouldn't, she couldn't, yet there is the gun.

"You're a liar, Dexter Morgan," she says. " _You_ killed Dad."

I don't know what's coming next but I can't close my eyes. I can't break our gaze. If she's going to kill me, I need to see her do it. I can never believe it otherwise. I stare into those eyes that are just like mine and wait.


	4. Chapter 4

Deb and I are frozen still in this standoff. She's got all the power, in that pistol against my head. Part of me knows she won't, knows she'll choose me because that's what she always does, but another part of me knows that my Debra has changed and I must never underestimate her. This is not the Deb I dragged off Brian Moser's table. This is not the same sister I used to share a bath with when I was four and she was eighteen months old. This Deb is cracked and different. I love her the same as ever but I must always be careful.

I can see she doesn't believe what I've just told her. Her eyes are deep with conflicting emotions.

"You're lying," she hisses in my face, staying close, blocking view of the gun from my son. I'm grateful for this thoughtfulness but she won't be able to block the noise of gunfire from him if she decides to pull that trigger.

"I'm not lying to you," I answer honestly. "Vogel just told me. She killed him to keep him from changing me. So I would go on killing."

Deb stares at me.

"No," she says slowly, "you told me he killed himself. Because of you. I saw the tapes. DVDs," she corrects quickly. "I saw the last interview. He said he couldn't live with himself."

"I know. I told you what Matthews told me. The Medical Examiner ruled it a suicide but Matthews announced it as a heart attack to save us the pain. But it wasn't either. Harry did overdose, but it was Vogel, not him."

"How?" Deb demands of me. She pushes the muzzle tighter against my skull. "Did she crush the pills up in his drink? It's not like she could force them down his throat. How did she manage it?"

A horrific mental image of Vogel sneaking into my father's medicine cabinet and dissolving his medication into a drink strikes me with a sickening sense of déjà vu. Did Vogel kill Harry in the same way Hannah tried to kill Debra?

"I don't know how," I admit. "She didn't tell me. But she confessed to killing him. She still thinks it was the right thing to do. That's when I tried to kill her."

"Why would she do that?" Deb's anger and shock have run their course; they give way to crumbling disbelief and confusion. "She and Dad built you together. He was in on it all. Why would she kill him?"

"He changed his mind," I explain. "He didn't like the reality of what he turned me into. He backed out and he was going to confront me and retrain me. He wasn't going to let me keep killing."

I wonder briefly whether this would have worked. After my first couple of kills, I was loving it. Would I have stopped when Harry told me I had to? I don't know for sure, but he _was_ able to keep me from killing for ten years before then. And Vogel was worried enough to kill him over it.

"So... she just killed him?" Deb asks, uncertain now. "You really mean it? You're not fucking with me?"

"I wouldn't joke about this."

"But... I thought she cared about us."

"I know. I thought so, too."

"But how could she? She... Shit, she told us..." My sister shakes her head; I imagine I can hear a thousand thoughts racing wildly through it. "She _lied_ to us." Several times her mouth forms words that don't come out as she comes to terms with the truth. "She let me think Dad gave up. I thought he killed himself because of you, and she knew different. She let me think..." Deb's face twists with pain she can barely hold in. Her next words are soft. "I thought, again, I wasn't good enough. I wasn't good enough to outweigh the bad he saw in you. I thought he didn't love me enough."

"He didn't leave us, Deb," I say, because this point is important to me, too. "He didn't abandon us. He loved us – you especially. He couldn't bear the thought of me doing what I do to you one day. Vogel, fucking Vogel, took him away."

Deb struggles with this for a very long time. A string of murmured obscenities begins to pour from her; twice she glances at Harrison to ensure he can't hear her. I don't interrupt. With a final, frustrated "Jesus Christ, Dexter!" she drops her hand. The pressure on my temple is removed as the gun swings to her side. She drops her head forward and our foreheads knock together lightly. She stays like this, leaning into me.

"So I shouldn't have called you back at all," she suggests. "Or I shouldn't have met you. I should have let you do it."

"No. Saxon was there. It was bad timing; I was going to get hurt or get caught. You called at exactly the right moment."

"Vogel killed my dad," Deb clarifies. "There can't possibly have been a right moment to stop you from killing her." She closes her eyes. "I told her stuff. I let her into my life, my mind. I stayed in her house. I ate her food and drank her fucking tea. What if she'd decided _I_ was no good for you?"

I hadn't thought of this. Her eyelashes brush my nose as she blinks and I imagine a life in which this can never happen, because she's not in it. I'm immediately overcome with protectiveness and self-loathing. I left my sister in Vogel's care for days on end, knowing the psychiatrist wasn't thrilled with my relationship with her. I recall the doctor telling me I didn't _need_ Deb, and that I needed to be prepared for a life without her. I thought she meant Deb might choose to leave me. What if she'd meant something worse? What if Vogel had planned to kill my sister as well? Right now it wouldn't surprise me. But if that is the case, why didn't she carry it out?

"I don't want to think about it," I say finally. Deb is building back up.

"I helped you save her life!" she remembers, disgustedly. "I helped you track and kill Yates. We should have let him break all her fucking toes. We should have let him kill her." A choked laugh escapes. "We should have offered to help."

This vengeful Deb isn't unfamiliar. She's always been there, hiding in the shadows of moral and just Deb. She just doesn't often get a voice. She slants her eyes up to look into mine.

"Are you still going to do it?"

I haven't actually decided. I _want_ to. I'm hurt and angered by Vogel's betrayal. I've been thinking of her as my creator but really she's a destroyer. She killed an innocent and noble man for trying to protect his children. I think of my kind and conflicted father and what she's done to him; I think of how she weaselled herself into mine and Debra's lives and how she's lied and manipulated us since. My blood boils with hatred and the primal urge to end her life and chop her into little pieces eats at me.

On the other hand, Vogel killed Harry _because he wanted me to stop killing_. Knowing this, is killing her the right way to avenge him? I don't know but something tells me it would be less than honourable. I don't think Harry's ghost will approve. I just can't think of anything else right now that better suits her crime.

"I don't think Dad would want me to."

"Fuck him," Deb answers, her voice deliberately low to avoid being overheard by Harrison but harsher than I think she intended. "You'll never know what Dad wants, because of that bitch. _I_ want you to."

It's not been often that she's promoted or supported my lifestyle, and this is only the second time she's made such a request. Last time it was Hannah she wanted dead. On both counts I am hesitant to do as she asks, and she sees the indecision in my eyes.

"Seriously?" she asks. "You get around killing motherfuckers for your whole life, and the two times _ever_ that I _ask_ you to do it, to people who _deserve it_ , you don't want to?"

"Vogel doesn't fit the Code," I remind her.

"You don't know that," she argues. "You haven't looked yet. There could be half a dozen other dads, a dozen, even. People who didn't agree with her methods. Your Code isn't the only measure of guilt, Dexter. Evelyn Vogel built a custom-made serial killer out of a police officer's son. She conscripted you to track and kill the creep leaving brain bits on her doorstep. She's lied to authorities on countless occasions. She lied to _us_. She's hurt people, including her patients. She is harbouring Saxon, a murderer, _right now_. She deserves your table."

Deb raises good points that I can't really argue with, but in her eyes I see our father. I never knew what he really died for. He died for _us_. He died because he believed I could be something better than what Vogel had told him I had to be. He died because he didn't want Deb left with what he created.

I understand what he died for but I am not sure yet whether I believe the same. Can I be better than what I am? Can I stop killing, or cut back, simply because my father wanted me to? I don't know that I have that sort of discipline or self-control.

In terms of Deb, I think I can agree that my choices have taken a toll on her that Harry would be upset about. Probably he was more worried that I would slit her throat in her sleep and cut her up with power tools but doubtless he wouldn't like the alternative much more. She's not dead or scattered across the ocean but how many times has she almost died because of my actions? I count her altercations with Brian, Trinity's daughter Christine, Travis Marshall's disciple Beth Dorsey, the brutal rapist and killer of women Speltzer and my own girlfriend Hannah. There are probably others, but these are all either because of me directly or because I was arrogant and failed to take down a killer when I first had a chance.

Behind Deb is the grave of my wife. Unlike my sister, my sweet, beautiful wife didn't survive my mistakes. Dad would have loved Rita and what she did for my life. She showed me I could love, because before I met Rita, I hadn't believed it. I hadn't even known I loved Deb – I just thought my feelings for her were programmed, the way Vogel still believes they are. I used to think my interactions with my sister were automatic, dutiful performances to keep the pretence up that I'm normal and functional. Now I know it's more than that. Now I wonder if _I'm_ more than that. I feel that feather-light brush of Deb's lashes again. The fact that I can _feel_ and enjoy this platonic intimacy tells me my father might have been right. Maybe I am more.

"I need to think about it," I tell her after a lot of thought. "There's-"

"Fuck you, Dex," Deb snaps, shoving away from me and marching back in the direction of the car. "I don't know why we even have these conversations. If it's something I want, I should know you're not going to do it. It's only ever about _you_ and what _you_ want. If you won't do it, I'm going to."

Harrison looks up from his colouring book and watches his aunt storm off. Unconcerned, he goes back to his task. My son is so unaffected by conflict. Is this normal, or have we done this to him? I don't have time to wonder. I chase my sister.

"Deb, don't," I call after her as I gain ground. She casts a nasty look back at me. "You can't be serious."

I catch up and manage to get in front of her. She stops when she can't get past.

"Why not?" she demands. "Why are you the only person allowed to feel betrayed by this bitch?"

"I'm not," I assure her, eyeing Harrison over her shoulder. "You have every right to be angry. But this isn't the way. This isn't you."

"What isn't? What _is_ me? I don't even know anymore." She glares at me. "See, I thought I was a good person-"

"You are."

"- yet I seem to have two murderers hiding in my house planning a getaway out of the country, and I seem to keeping a massive world-crushing secret for my serial killer brother and I seem to be working in the same precinct that used to be captained by a woman I shot."

"Now you seem to be waving a gun around in broad daylight in a public cemetery," I add, reaching for her weapon. She keeps it out of my grasp.

"And I also seem to be on my way to kill the bitch that killed my dad," she continues bitingly, "so who knows who the fuck I am these days? And fuck off, Dexter," she adds, shoving my hand away when I keep trying for the gun. "You're not getting it."

I sigh, frustrated with her.

"You can't kill Vogel," I say with finality. She smirks and gets in my face.

"Watch me. I don't need your permission."

"You won't survive it. It'll ruin you. Murder isn't _you_. It took you half this year to recover from killing Maria. You aren't a killer."

"Maria La Guerta was innocent," Deb insists. "I've felt no guilt whatsoever over the other people I've shot: El Sapo, or that fucker in the restaurant. Trust me; I'm not going to feel any guilt over Vogel." She presses her lips together, angry and upset. "She killed Dad. I tried to kill _you_ over this, Dex. I can't begin to tell you how sick that makes me feel. She has a lot to answer for."

I don't know what to say. I can't let her do it. I allow myself a moment of distraction in the form of my infuriatingly itchy, throbbing hand.

"I know you're angry but you don't want to do this," I say as I scratch at the skin underneath the bandage. Twice I knock the edge of the wound itself and pain shoots through my hand. Deb snorts with amusement at my words.

"Yeah, I really do."

"You've killed in the line of duty but killing for personal reasons is totally different," I remind her. "You know what I'm talking about. Stop thinking like this. You have no plan. You're going to get caught. Besides, killing Vogel would make three."

Deb takes my meaning and folds her arms.

"I would be a serial killer," she acknowledges. She pauses, as though sizing up this disadvantage. "We really would be family, then."

"Fuck, Deb! Listen to yourself. You sound insane. And it's not 'killing people' that defines me, so it can't be 'killing people' that makes us family. It's _because_ we're family that I can't let you do it."

"Would it matter who it was?" Deb asks, suddenly curious. "If I said I wanted to kill Saxon, or Hannah, or someone else deserving, would you react the same way? Is it just because I'm so mad that I might screw up, or is it the magic number? You didn't mind my help in killing Yates but I wasn't the one that staked him."

I begin to unravel the bandage partially so I can tighten it. I'm not enjoying this line of conversation. This twenty-four period is taking its toll on my relationship with my sister. Who the fuck aligned the stars like this to make today such a disaster? We've weathered a lot together but today and yesterday, we've found ourselves in increasingly dark places. Before yesterday, Deb has hit me a couple of times, but never lost control on me like that. She's drawn a gun on me once before, but never held it to my head with my son metres away. Before yesterday, I'd told her lots of things she didn't like, but never had my words ripped her apart like that. Now we're discussing murder, and in contrast to our discussion of this very same murder only an hour ago on the phone, _I'm_ trying to talk _her_ out of it.

"I don't want to see you get hurt," I say.

"So then you do it."

"Deb, I don't know if I want to. I need to think about it. And I _definitely_ don't want you to. Regardless of what number it brings you to."

Deb shakes her head.

"No. You don't want me to kill a third time. You don't want a serial killer for a sister." Her eyes narrow with certainty. "Then you might have to kill me."

I stop what I'm doing and look up at her in shock. This has _never_ occurred to me. Whatever she's done, however angry I've been with her, however close she's been to wreaking havoc on my existence, it has never seriously crossed my mind to end her life. I recall Vogel asking me why I didn't kill her at the church. I didn't have an answer for her. It wasn't an option. Deb is one of only four people on the planet who are completely untouchable. Like my son and Rita's children, I can never hurt Deb. None of my family are exactly immune to my darkness – all four have been damaged and painfully affected by their exposure to me, and Deb worst of all – but I will never take their lives.

Deb looks momentarily unsettled by the expression on my face. She can tell how confronted I am by this prospect. My reaction affects her. Her voice hitches.

"I'd deserve it. The table; the knife. Maybe this a neat way to tie off all your loose ends in Miami?"

I hear what she's suggesting and I feel sick. She's suggesting I kill her. Kill her and run. Nobody left behind to use to track me down, no miserable Deb rotting in prison, nothing pulling me back to town for risky visits.

"You'd be gentle, wouldn't you?" she prompts quietly. I stare at her, loose bandage hanging limply from my hand, my future sinking into an abysmal, frightening blackness. "You wouldn't let me suffer for long."

"Deb, please, stop." My breathing has become laboured, as it did when I was at Vogel's. It's panic. I don't experience it often but I know what it is. "I never would, I never could."

She doesn't let me off. "What, don't like the mental image of plastic-wrapping me naked to a table and taking a blood slide from-"

"Fuck it, alright, you win," I interrupt, upset by the visualisation. I've seen it all before, when my brother Brian kidnapped her and prepped her to be our first kill together. I take deep, deliberate breaths. "I'll do it."

"You will?" She is surprised.

"I'll kill Vogel, if you'll drop this. And if you keep out of it. I can't let you do it – and not because then I'd have to kill you – but because it wouldn't be right to let you. You'll regret it. I might regret it, too, but I can live with that." I sigh and go back to unravelling my bandage. My panic has subsided and given way to the irritation that hides my worry. "God, Deb, imagine telling me I should kill you? What a stupid thing to say. Give me that." I reach over and snatch her gun away. This time she doesn't resist. "Who draws a gun on a known psychopath and tells him you would deserve to die?"

She shrugs. "Someone fucked-up, I guess."

"Next time you bring that shit up again, I'm going to tranquilise you," I threaten. "It makes me sick. I told you, I'm never going to let anything happen to you. I'd sooner let you kill me than elect to hurt you."

She watches me work on my hand. After a few layers are away, evidence of the bleed becomes apparent as a dull stain in the fabric of the bandage. She frowns and takes the end of the bandage from me, giving it a yank to unravel it completely. The messy, jagged, moist wound is revealed. It looks terrible. She recoils. "Jesus, Dex. Take that shit to a frigging hospital, will you?"

"Not until I know what's happening at Vogel's," I reply. I reach over and go through her handbag without asking permission. She's not girly but she _is_ a girl. There is sure to be a packet of tissues in here somewhere. I drop her gun back inside. "Vogel was pretty shaken by my reaction, and she set Saxon on me. She could have called the police, for all I know. I don't want to be sitting at a hospital with a cut the same shape as the teacup and a pile of stitches in my hand when they come looking for me."

"You'd rather be sitting in a cemetery with a cut the same shape as the teacup and _no_ stitches?" Deb points out. She pushes me away from my useless search of her bag and pulls a packet of tissues from the inner pocket. She takes over the redressing of my wound. She wipes away the new blood and uses another tissue as a compress, which she rewraps expertly. "Who would have thought I'd be your nurse two days running?" She tucks the end of the bandage tightly. "I guess the hospital is a bad idea."

She eyes my various injuries critically, without pity or regret. I imagine a hospital visit and mentally agree that it would be awkward, considering my swollen face, sliced-up hand and the probable burn on my leg where I spilt Vogel's tea. I haven't checked it yet but it hasn't stopped stinging. I don't have a very good explanation for any of the injuries.

"You know, I really don't think Vogel would have called the police," Deb mentions. "What would be the benefit in that for her? She'd have to explain why you lost it with her, and so much shit could come up that she doesn't want getting out. Dad, the Code, Yates, Saxon... There's no way she's that stupid."

"She can't really take me on with the law without bringing herself down, too," I concur. "She has a lot to lose as well."

We look back at Harrison. He is still drawing, funny oversized hat keeping the sun off his face. Deb gathers her thoughts and looks around the cemetery.

"So you're really going to do it?"

"I'm not doing it right now, if that's what you mean," I answer, starting back in the direction of Rita's gravesite. Harrison has hardly noticed our absence. He appears unfazed by our heated exchange and makes no indication that he saw his aunt threaten his father with a pistol. He has finished his colouring and, when he sees us returning, carefully tears the page away from the binding.

"I went outside the lines at this bit," he tells Deb worriedly when she kneels down beside him. He shows her the problematic area. "Only a little. Do you think Mommy will still like it?"

The vengeful, hateful, hopeless Debs I've been dealing with since picking her up from the florist are not present in the loving aunt who takes the fedora and brushes her hand across Harrison's sandy blonde hair.

"She will love it so much," she promises her nephew, and together they choose a place on the grave where Rita will be able to see it from Heaven, and they weigh it down in the corners with stones. Harrison, giggling, positions the stolen hat on Deb's head. I stand back and give them this time together. I use the moment to think loving thoughts about my wife and to miss her. While at times she complicated my life, she also provided me with so much, not least of all a stable and compassionate role model and companion for my child.

Unbidden, unexpected, a vision of Hannah comes to my mind. I realise I have hardly thought of her all day. I don't feel as guilty as I expect I will when I'm faced with her anger and jealousy this evening. Hannah is beautiful and I love her, and she loves Harrison and he liked her those times he met her. Implicit to our crazy, impulsive plan to run away together to Argentina is the idea that she would become Harrison's stepmother. She will raise him. He will leave Miami, probably forever, or at least for his entire youth.

I am saddened now by this prospect. In Argentina, Harrison can never visit his mother's grave and leave pictures and flowers here with his aunt. He'll never put stupid hats on Deb's head. He cannot continue to grow more like her if she is not around. Besides Jamie, Deb is the most normal person in his world. His relationship with Deb is special, like my bond with her. I consider Deb to be mine but in that I am slightly incorrect; she is also my son's. And we're hers.

As my son and sister step away from the grave, ready to leave, I gather Harrison into my arms and pull Deb in close for a warm embrace. She puts her arms around Harrison and me. All the bitterness, violence and disagreement that have surrounded us on and off for long don't matter when we're like this. I can't possibly leave this behind. I have it all. There are things to fix, obviously, like Saxon and Vogel, and things to work around, like Hannah's needs and expectations, but I can make this work.

"I love you," I whisper to them both, and, with a glance upwards, to my late wife, too. Harrison hugs my neck and snuggles his head against mine and Deb's. His colouring book flutters against my shoulder.

In the car, we are silent for a while. It's less tense than the ride over. We agree to go straight home, to leave my car overnight to avoid giving Saxon something to follow. Harrison nods off in his seat, conveniently.

"I'll call Vogel tomorrow," I say. "I'll act like I'm sorry and see where we stand."

"Act like you're sorry. Sounds different."

I ignore the dig. "She thinks I belong to her; she'll take me back. Then I can get close to her again and take her out. I'll just have to be careful of Saxon. He'll be watching out for me." I look over at my sister as she slows for a red light. "You need to be careful, too. I don't know how deeply offended Saxon is by today's events, but considering he followed me out to the suburbs I'm willing to surmise that he's reasonably pissed. In Saxon's mind, Evelyn is _his_ property, and I've damaged it. He could come after you. In fact," I correct apologetically, "he probably will, if Vogel doesn't call him off."

"Why me?" Deb asks, annoyed. "Why not skank-face?"

"He probably doesn't know about Hannah, plus he wouldn't know where to look. You're heavily featured in Vogel's notes on me, which he's read." I watch the pedestrians cross up ahead at the lights. "You're the obvious next target if he can't get to me. So we'll just play safe. We stick together. Drive to work together, don't even leave the house alone. Stay with me twenty-four-seven until I've gotten rid of Saxon."

"This is going to be such a delight," Deb mutters. "Stuck at home with you and your happy family. Just get the fuckers quick, will you?"

I sit back in my seat and breathe deeply. I do enjoy the hunt that I'm about to embark on, and I even feel better about Vogel and her treachery now that I've decided to take her out. My dad wouldn't like it but, I decide, he'd probably have lived with it if he'd seen what the alternative was doing to his daughter. Vogel needs to die. Her continued existence is too repulsive to my sister, and, honestly, it's pretty repulsive to me, too.  
*

"Thank you, for saying you'll do it," Deb adds, very quietly. "It means a lot to me, you know. That you agreed. And didn't, you know, agree with the other shit I was saying."

The traffic gets moving again.

"You do talk a lot of shit," I comment finally, and she reaches over and punches my arm. It's nothing like yesterday's efforts; playful, friendly. "Deb, I could never do what you were suggesting. It wouldn't matter if you killed a thousand people – I'd still let you carve my heart out of my chest before I raised a hand to you."

The tentative smile she offers me is like sunshine.

We get back to Deb's side of town and turn onto her street. I reach to my feet, where she dumped her bag earlier. I hoist it onto my lap, so I can hand it to her when he park, and look up out the front window.

Two male figures stand outside Deb's door. One is Jacob Elway, Deb's former employer and a slimeball. He's peering through the window. The other, I realise with a sinking feeling, is Deputy Marshal Clayton, and he is holding an envelope in one hand that looks way too much like a warrant. When he sees us pulling up, I notice his other hand shift to his hip and the gun he has there.

"Fuck, what does he want?" Deb wonders aloud. She sounds more irritated than worried, so I gather she hasn't yet met Clayton and she's referring only to Elway. "Wish he'd just fuck right off."

I watch as Clayton points our arrival out to Elway and they both start in the direction of Deb's car. I don't panic but I do feel the pressure of worry. Why would they be here, at Deb's? She has no link to Hannah McKay except that she arrested her, which is something to be discussed at work, not a personal house call type of conversation. I think of Hannah, just inside those walls. They know she's here, I realise suddenly. If that's a warrant, we're so fucked. She won't be able to hide, and she won't be able to sneak out unseen. They'll catch her, arrest us for holding a fugitive. I love Hannah and have trusted her once before with my secrets while in custody, but first and foremost I know that Hannah will take care of Hannah before she looks out for anyone else's interests. Sal Price is the victim they want to charge her over, and that guy died in my living room. He was also seeing Deb.

If Hannah talks or misdirects, how easily can my sister and I be pulled into the one murder neither of us actually have anything to do with? Quite easily, I realise, doing the math. My name is already attached to a number of loosely closed homicides. It won't take a lot of digging to bury me in my own cover-ups. Look at how much Deb, Doakes and La Guerta worked out when they respectively became obsessed with my pastime. My acts have been covered but not erased. Same with Deb's. The patterns and facts are still there to be found by someone looking. Phone records and GPS data will put Deb and me at La Guerta's murder; that CCTV footage from the gas station puts Deb at the church we burned down.

And from there, a whole miasma of mess awaits us. A mess that makes my relationship with my sister look like something from a fucking fairytale.

"Dexter, get your sister out of here," my father's voice urges from the backseat near Harrison. "This is it. This is what you've spent your whole life avoiding. They know, and they're here for you. You've failed rule number one. You're going down; no reason she should go down with you."

"How did they find me?" I ask of my father. Deb, the only person actually listening, shrugs without really understanding the question.

"Who is that with him?" Deb asks with mild interest, taking her bag from me. I'm struck with a number of half-formed plans. I hold onto the handle.

"Fucking Vogel put them onto me," I say with certainty. "This is it."

"This is what?" Deb asks.

"Dexter!" Harry's tone is urgent. He and I both know we're running out of time.

"Deb, this is bad," I say. "They're here for Hannah. Give me the gun."

"What, are you crazy?" she demands, yanking on her bag. "You can't kill a couple of dudes on my front fucking porch."

"Deb," I plead, possibilities crashing through my mind. I see no easy way out. "This is _really_ bad. I can take care of this. You just go; drive. No one needs to ever know you were involved."

I clench my fists, furious. I'm furious with Vogel for complicating my life in multiple ways; I'm furious with my father's ghost for not being more helpful and positive, though of course he's part of me, so he can only represent emotions I am actually feeling; I'm furious with Elway for being such a slimy creep and with Clayton for being so persistent. I'm furious with Hannah for being so easily traced, having killed like six people and not even competently covering her tracks. I'm furious with Deb for giving in to me yesterday and letting me win her back, and for answering my prayers today at Vogel's, because now that the law is here to collect, they're going to take her, too. I wish now that she'd fought that little bit longer, run away, left me, let me drown in my own destructiveness. She'd be better off.

She's staring at me with those eyes that are just like mine. I realise I am not furious with her at all. Vogel was right about at least one thing – Deb is a mirror. I see in her a version of myself, and when I am mad with her, I am actually just mad with myself. Like right now. I am not furious with her; I'm furious with myself for slipping up and letting us end up in this position.

I won't let her go down for my mistakes. She and my son are innocent and I want them to stay that way in the eyes of the law. The walls are closing in but I can fix this. I rifle through the bag and grab the gun.

"Debra," I say, "run."


	5. Chapter 5

The men stalk closer to the car and my sister's hazel eyes are wide, staring back into mine. I can't watch them take her. I'll tear their heads from their bodies if they try. I have told her to run; I know I can make this work if she does. She can drive off with my son while I kill Elway and Clayton. I can dispose of their bodies. There will be no evidence she was ever here. If I'm caught it will all be on me. Me and Hannah.

People will be looking for these guys soon enough. The Deputy Marshal's disappearance in particular will not go unnoticed. The authorities will trace Clayton's steps along his search for Hannah back to me. They will make the link that Clayton was investigating me while my sister's ex-employer also went missing at the same time. But I can't let Deb get caught. I see that envelope in the Deputy Marshal's hand and I am convinced it is a warrant. I am so sure they are here to search the place for Hannah. If they have a warrant it means they have something else – evidence that a judge took seriously. We are so screwed.

"Talk about fucking overreacting," Deb says irritably, ripping the bag out of my hands and throwing open her door. She steps out and leans back in. "You're getting paranoid, you know that?"

I hate not knowing what's coming next. I jump out of the passenger side door with more haste than is necessary and move quickly to her side. We both leave our car doors open.

"Morgan," Jacob Elway acknowledges Deb, nodding. He smiles over at me. He seems relaxed. "Hi, Dexter."

I smile back, but I don't feel it. I don't like this man at all. Especially when he brings a Deputy Marshal to my sister's doorstep.

"How's it going, Elway?" I respond, tone friendly. Might as well feign ignorance, I suppose. His smile slides away as he gets closer, though. I tense slightly in response, ready for violence if it is required.

"Better than you, by the looks of things. Are you alright, Dexter? You look awful. What the hell happened?"

"Oh." I attempt a sheepish smile. "This. It's a pretty embarrassing story, actually. I'd rather not get into it." I turn my smile on Clayton. "We meet again, Deputy Marshal."

Deb's gaze fixes on me and I feel the irritation radiating from her. Yeah, I can understand why this time. This is probably something I should have mentioned in those moments sitting in the car, instead of just freaking out and telling her to flee. I do this to her a lot, actually. I keep facts to myself and expect her to trust my word without providing her with any reason. I know it shits her right off. I can't blame her. I'd feel the same if she did it to me.

"You do seem to be everywhere I go, Mr Morgan," Clayton agrees dryly. He extends a hand to my sister. "Deputy Marshal Max Clayton."

"Detective Debra Morgan," she replies, shaking his hand firmly. "What can we do for you, Deputy Marshal?"

"He's looking into the possibility that Hannah McKay might be back in Miami," Elway fills in. "Turns out that hunch of yours may really be something."

It's my turn to offer Deb a sharp look loaded with meaning. _Her_ hunch? I had no idea the U.S. Marshal Service was looking for Hannah on _her_ advice. Should I feel as betrayed as I do right now? I was only hypothesising before but _do_ feel the same now that she's doing this shit to me. Deb's return look is cold and unapologetic.

"Really?" she asks them. She glances back into the car to check on Harrison. He is still sound asleep in his car seat. "I had a feeling that skank wouldn't stay away. What would you like to know?"

"Could you tell me where you two have just been?" Clayton asks. "Just for my notes, you know." He has a professional manner that I respect, even though I don't like him being here. I wonder whether this nobility is something I can use against him, since Deb isn't likely to give me that gun.

"Yeah, we've just been to Dexter's wife's gravesite," she says. She gestures to the car. "We took the little guy to lay some flowers and draw some pictures for his mom. It was..." She scratches her eyebrow. "It was kinda emotional."

"What was the occasion?" Elway asks quickly. When we stare at him, he adds, tactlessly, "Wedding anniversary? Birthday?"

"The occasion was we missed her," I pipe up pointedly, annoyed. Elway doesn't take the hint that he's being rude, and looks around innocently.

"Where's your car, Dexter?"

"Still at the florist where we met," Deb answers for me. She turns firmly to the Deputy Marshal. "How's the investigation going?"

Clayton seems at ease with my sister – she is law enforcement and unlike me, the ex-boyfriend, has no obvious reason to want to misdirect him. I am still watching that envelope in his hand.

"So far nothing much has come up," he admits. "There have been alleged sightings here and there but nothing concrete and nothing on camera. I'm working with the theory that Hannah McKay slipped into town under the alias 'Maggie Castner'; that is the name you gave, isn't it?"

Deb nods. My fingers are itching to snatch that bag off her shoulder and fire bullets into each man's chest. I don't even like guns. I just don't have anything better available.

"Detective Morgan didn't want to tell me where she got the name from," Elway tells the Marshal pointedly. My sister and I both glare at him. He's putting her in an awkward spot and he knows it.

"It's another embarrassing story," Deb says. She brushes her hair back off her face, which sports a very reluctant expression. "Suffice it to say, I didn't do anything illegal."

"I'd really appreciate it if you could be a little more specific," Clayton requests. His tone is firm but kind, the sort of tone you don't mind helping. Deb appears to struggle. I try to keep my hands still.

"I, uh, brought this guy home. A sailor." She glances at me as if she wishes I weren't around to hear this. I feel no shame; I've heard and seen much worse in regards to Deb's love life. I'm watching Elway's stony expression as it twists with contempt. "He told me he'd just sailed in with some boat, and his boss was that billionaire Castner. He mentioned the wife, Maggie, and said he thought there was something up with her wanting so badly to come here, since it was out of the way of their planned trip. He thought it was something dishonest and he was worried for his boss. It struck my curiosity and I looked into it, and what do you fucking know – I saw Hannah McKay's picture on this Maggie Castner's passport."

I stare at Deb. I almost believe her. It sounds possible, even probable, yet I know that's not how she found out Hannah was back. Having her food spiked and me kidnapped from her living room was the first clue.

Clayton opens his envelope and I clench my hands into fists, ready. He withdraws the contents.

"Is this what you're talking about?" he asks, showing her a coloured print-out comparing Hannah's passport with Maggie Castner's. Deb nods again. I try to relax. It's not a warrant. Deb's got this. We're not out of the woods but things aren't as bad as I feared. "Could you give me that sailor's name?"

"Uh," Deb says doubtfully, reluctantly, "I didn't get his name."

"Classy, Deb," Elway comments with a tight smile. She shoots him one of her nastiest looks.

"They've sailed out now, though, haven't they?" she asks Clayton. Her question pulls his attention away from me; he has been eyeing the smudge of blood on my shirt. "Was Maggie Castner not listed as being onboard?"

"No one seems to have seen her or her husband in several weeks now. I expect she's still around."

"But you must have known that, Deb," Elway slides in. "Don't you remember that you borrowed the GPS tracking equipment, and you ended up at Key West? You were looking for McKay. Who were you following?"

Me.

"My asshole brother," Deb confirms, jerking her head in my direction. "I thought he was hooking up with McKay."

Elway and Clayton turn to me at once, slightly surprised with the ease with which that came out.

"And were you?" Clayton asks me. I freeze, horrified that Deb would lead the conversation this way. She snorts with derision.

"No, he was meeting a different tramp," she says. "Arlene. Drug-addled fuck-up with a pile of scruffy, misbehaving kids. You know the one?"

Clayton gives a lop-sided smile. I recognise my cue to start acting as though all this offends me and exhale heavily as though frustrated. Hannah's friend from her earlier life is meant to be my girlfriend, as far as Clayton understands.

"Deb, that's not fair," I interject. "Arlene is-"

"A fucking mess. Yeah, I know. Another great catch, Dex."

The Deputy Marshal is calmed by Deb's obvious distaste for my choices – it makes my renewed connection with Hannah seem less likely and makes him feel more like she's on his side. The private investigator with him folds his arms.

"Must run in the family, all these great relationship choices," Elway comments. Even Clayton glances at him sideways. It's obviously out of line. Deb smiles tightly and opens Harrison's door.

"Well, when you find out your father fucked both your own mom and your foster brother's mom, or when you come home and find your wife dead in the bath and your son sitting in her blood, or when your lover is shot dead in front of you or when your fiancé kidnaps you and tries to kill you, then you can judge our 'great relationship choices' from the same fucking perspective that we do and they might not look so strange." In the very awkward silence that follows, Deb carefully unbuckles Harrison from his booster seat and lifts him out of the car. He dozily stirs and resettles with his head on her shoulder. They look like mother and child. Deb's eyes meet mine. She's as furious as I am. "I'll put him down for the afternoon and I'll be back."

I nod and watch her disappear into the house. She'll warn Hannah. She's pissed but she'll be alright. I round on Elway.

"That was uncalled for," I comment tightly. He raises his hands apologetically.

"I know, I'm sorry," he says. "I meant no disrespect to your late wife. I was joking around, and it was in poor taste."

"I'm not talking about me or my wife. I'm talking about my sister. Her life is none of your business."

"She's tough, Dexter. She can handle it. And she gives as good as she gets."

"You need to fucking lay off," I tell him in a low voice. He's surprised by my change in tone and demeanour. To the world, Dexter Morgan is the quiet, amiable, easy-going sibling, but Deb is _mine_ and he's treading on some thin ice. This whole exchange he's been trying to back Deb and me into corners using inappropriate lines of conversation; I decide to turn the tables. "I know you're into her but she had every right to reject you-"

" _What_?!" Elway pulls a disgusted look and takes a step away from me. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"- and it's time you backed the fuck down. She quit your employ to get away from this shit. Sorry," I add to Clayton, "as you can probably gather my sister and I have seen some pretty horrific times together and I'm very protective of her."

The Deputy Marshal nods once in understanding, casting a now-doubtful look at his companion. My unnecessary dredging of Elway's crush on Deb has had the desired effect. Clayton is unsure now of Elway's professionalism and motives and will perhaps hesitate before acting on the investigator's information in future. Deb's outburst about our tragic relationships paints us and our choices in a sympathetic light. Despite our difference in opinion on the other women in my life, my defence of my sister's honour and Deb's mothering of my little boy indicates our closeness as a family and makes the chance of me jeopardising this life for a killer seem highly unlikely. We look like a couple of decent people who have had it rough and are making it work – not that far from reality, then.

"I think it's time we left you to your afternoon," Clayton says tactfully, offering his hand. His timing couldn't be better; he cuts off Elway's stuttered retort cleanly. I decide I don't hate him. He knows his place and how to read a sensitive situation. He gives me another card. "Please give this to your sister and tell her to call me if she thinks of anything else."

"I will," I agree, and begin shutting the car doors now that the sound won't awaken my son. "She and I will be nothing but cooperative, I promise you. Especially Deb. There's nothing she wants more than to see Hannah McKay back behind bars."

Well, except to see Vogel dead, me normal and me over Hannah. I see Hannah's incarceration as being the second-most-likely of these to occur, so if she must have one, I will ensure Vogel gets what she deserves.

Clayton and Elway leave. I imagine Clayton berating the investigator in the car over his lack of discretion and for putting informers offside, potentially damaging the investigation. I imagine the respectable Marshal is embarrassed to have been caught up in a workplace sexual harassment situation. I imagine his working relationship with Deb's slimy ex-employer is over.

Inside, the living room is devoid of life. I resist the urge to call out and wake my son. I check Deb's room first but no one is there. I find my whole family in the guest bedroom, where Deb has just laid Harrison down for a sleep and Hannah is standing by the window, watching the car drive off. She turns to me with worried eyes.

"Come on," Deb mutters, ushering us out to let Harrison sleep. Once the door is shut behind us and we're standing around in the dining room, she says to me, "You really need to think fast about what you're going to tell him when he wakes up and sees _her_ here."

I run a hand through my hair. More to think about. I haven't really considered this yet. I suppose I pictured Harrison just running to Hannah, excited to see someone he knows and likes, and didn't really consider anything further than that. Will he ask where she's been? Will he ask why she's been on the news? Will he notice the hostility between his aunt and Hannah?

"They're gone," I redirect to an easier topic. I look at Hannah. "They're looking for you, but they haven't got anything yet. I think we've put them off for now. That should buy us some time."

"Yeah, slightly more time than shooting them in broad daylight," Deb agrees sarcastically. "What the fuck was with that?"

Hannah looks between us in confusion while I rub my eyes with my fingers.

"It's been a rough twenty-four hours," I remind Deb tightly. "I panicked."

"No shit. Rewind a couple of hours and you're on the phone, like, 'Deb, talk me down, don't let me kill', and then 'I don't know if I want to kill', and now you're like, 'Fucking run, Deb, I'm going to shoot these fuckers in your front fucking yard in front of peak hour traffic'!" She raises her arms in frustration and clenches her fists tightly. She presses them against the side of her head. "I was wrong. It's not _us_ that's the mess. It's not even me. It's _you_. You're all over the fucking place. Get it together."

She turns away. She's found something else about me she doesn't like. I feel like I did yesterday when this happened. I'm immediately frightened of where this will take us, and react as per usual.

"You're just as bad!" I hurl after her. "You're every bit as back-and-forth. You have no idea what you want."

I know it's hurtful and I'm stirring a pot that shouldn't be stirred but I can't help it. It's the cycle. It's the bait I use to pull her back, kicking and screaming, when she starts to pull on the line. When I have her close enough to grasp I'll catch hold and hold tight until she stops fighting, and when she breaks and takes me back, I'll be gentle and sorry and full of promises to be better. We'll start all over.

"Fuck you, Dexter!" she shouts back at me. But she doesn't come back to challenge me. She turns to walk backwards and throws her middle fingers up at me. She shoves her bedroom door open and locks herself inside.

I'm shocked. The bait didn't work. I spare a thought for my son and open his door a crack to check on him. Either he's a very deep sleeper or he's been conditioned to consider Deb's raised voice as background noise. He is snoring lightly. I close the door and allow myself to focus fully on my anger and the fear it shadows. I start after my sister, determined to have this argument out with her and complete the cycle. I'm immediately waylaid by Hannah grabbing my arm and spinning me to look at her.

"You're really more interested in fighting with your sister over nothing than in spending time talking with me?" she asks. She lifts an eyebrow and I see this morning's accusation staring back at me from those sparkling blue eyes. I take a deep breath and try to release the anger. It's hard. I feel Deb's gravity on the other side of that door, pulling on my being, demanding I go after her and use her to put myself back together.

"No, of course not," I assure Hannah, my voice indicating a much calmer Dexter than the one who stands before her. "Like I said before, it's been an intense day. I have so much to tell you."

I lead her out to the patio and we sit in the late afternoon sunshine.

"Where have you been all day?" Hannah asks, stroking my arm. "You finished work ages ago. I was worried. I was worried things might have changed... with us."

I have three significant women in my life. One I am preparing to kill, one is furious with me and the other is sitting here with me, looking uncertain. The issues I have with Vogel cannot be fixed. Nothing will undo the influence she has had on my life. The universe of problems I share with my sister multiply quicker than I can address them, but I will continue working through them for my whole life, I expect. Hannah is the only one of the three who is not, shall we say, a fact of life. Her life and mine are not one. She is with me because she chooses to be, and I am with her because _I_ choose to be. If she chooses to leave me, my life will return to its previous state with little transition. Same with hers. We don't need each other; what we have is based on _want_. If I am not good to her, or if I leave her wondering whether I am worth her time, she can walk away at any time. I love her and I don't want her to leave.

"Lots of things changed, but _we_ haven't," I promise. "I'm sorry I worried you." I pause, wondering where to begin. I decide to start by answering her question. "After work I went to Dr Vogel's. She wants me to lay off my search for Saxon, or Daniel, her son."

"Maybe you should," Hannah muses, tracing my arm with her fingertip. "I mean, as a favour to your friend. Dr Vogel is important to you, and this is important to her."

I shake my head. She doesn't understand. She doesn't feel urges to kill people. She only kills to protect herself.

"Is that what your sister was talking about?" she asks. "She said you called her about a kill?"

"Vogel and I got into an argument. I told her we were thinking of leaving town and she told me she killed my father."

Hannah's mouth drops open. She is shocked by this unexpected news. I turn away to look out across the beach. I am suddenly reminded of my conversation with Deb in the cemetery and want to stop myself from wondering how Evelyn killed Harry and whether it looked anything like the way Hannah tried to kill Debra.

"Dexter... I'm so sorry," Hannah stammers out. "I can't believe that. How-"

"I attacked her and nearly killed her," I interrupt before she can ask, and before I can say something I regret in response. "I only just had enough self-control to think of calling Deb to talk me out of it. I wasn't prepared; I would have left evidence all over the place."

"So you walked away?"

"More like ran."

"Dexter, I'm proud of you," Hannah says softly. "That must have been really, really hard to walk away from. See, you aren't a slave to your urges – you have a heart, and discipline. You can be more than what you think you are."

I don't correct her or remind her that it was Deb's influence that saved Vogel's life.

"It was hard but it was only a temporary fix. I'll go back later and kill her properly."

Hannah is startled. "Why? Dexter, you don't need to."

I stifle a heavy sigh. I decide against going into this topic with her. It would include stuff about Deb and Deb's darkness that I have never told Hannah. Deb's darkness is Deb's business, and not mine to share.

"Anyway, when I left there Saxon followed me," I say instead. Hannah's eyes widen. "I don't know how I didn't see him but he tracked me all the way out to the shopping centre where I met Deb and Harrison. I managed to lose him amongst the shoppers. He's sharper than I expected." I sit back in my chair. "I'm going to kill him. He's too much of a threat to me and mine."

"So... you've been shopping all afternoon?" Hannah queries. "Keeping an eye on Saxon?"

"No, we went out to Rita's gravesite and laid some flowers. Deb and I got some of our issues straight. Then we came home and found the Deputy Marshal and Deb's creepy old boss outside."

I can see from the expression on Hannah's face that my story is making little sense to her. I can appreciate how disjointed it must sound. I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket and withdraw it. Hannah is horrified by its brownish coating of dried blood.

"What happened to your phone?" she asks, running inside for a dishcloth. She returns and I hand her the still-ringing iPhone. She begins to wipe it down and it rings out. I hold out my bandaged hand as explanation.

"I got a little messy in my botched attempt on Vogel's life," I elaborate. She stares at me. "I told you, I had to call Deb."

"At the expense of your poor phone. How did you text me earlier if it looked like this?"

"It was still wet then. I just wiped the blood around the screen to see what I needed to see."

Hannah is grossed out. She drops the much cleaner phone back into my hand.

"So you're now determined to take out both Vogel and her son as soon as possible," she summarises. "Fine, whatever. I get that you think you have no choice. But let's talk about the important thing: where do we stand on Argentina?"

I carefully place my phone on the arm of my chair and gather my opinions on the matter.

"I can't say your silence is filling me with confidence, Dexter."

"I'm not being silent," I protest. I pause again, wondering how to explain. "It was... impetuous... of me to agree to it so quickly and without real thought of the consequences."

"Consequences for your sister, you mean."

"No. Yes. I mean, consequences for all of us," I amend finally. Hannah's eyes are cold and unforgiving. I have to make her understand. I turn my body and grasp her hands. "This has been a really awful day for me, right from when I told Deb we're leaving. She reminded me of a lot of things I'd forgotten to consider."

"Like what?" Hannah challenges coolly.

"Like, I need her," I answer bluntly. "It was proven to me today when I nearly fucked up. When I lose my head she brings me back. She makes me an alright person. It's because I have her that I am someone you can love. I don't know who I'll be if I leave Miami and she isn't with me anymore."

"Dexter," Hannah implores, squeezing my hands, "I know you must really love your sister. But you don't _need_ her. It isn't for _her_ that I love _you_."

"You don't know that," I insist. "You've never known a Dexter Morgan who wasn't influenced by her."

"I have faith in the man I love. I have faith in _you_." She smiles encouragingly. "You didn't have me before but now you do. _I_ can make you good. You can call _me_ when you're in a bad place and I'll pull you out. I love you, Dexter. I can be that person for you. It might take a while to get used to it, but I know we can do this. With time. I know it, I really do."

She thinks she can be my Deb. It would hurt her too much if I told her the truth – that there is only one Deb, and she cannot be replaced.

"It's not just that. There's lots of other stuff, like my other kids. I can't cut off contact with them forever. They don't have another dad. And that Marshal – he's looking for you, and if I leave town all of a sudden he's going to be looking into it."

"Let him."

"No." I am firm. "If he wants dirt on me he'll find it with minimal digging in the right place, and he'll only have Deb to prosecute. No one's going to believe she lived with me on and off for most of her life and never knew what I am. I'm not leaving her to take my fall for me."

"And we're back to Debra's best interests. What about what _we_ want, Dexter? What about what's best for you, or me? I can't stay here. Sooner or later they're going to catch me."

"It's not in anyone's interests for a good person to go to prison for a bad person. It's definitely not in my interests or even yours if Deb goes away bitter and gives us up."

"She wouldn't do that to you."

"Exactly." I struggle to make her see. I let down a wall and try to be honest. "She's my sister. I'm terrified of living my life without her. Even though she drives me crazy. Even though I'm usually mad with her. She's been there with me forever. Everything my father ever taught me was through my upbringing with her. He taught me about love, loyalty and duty to family, all through Deb. I wouldn't be human right now if Harry hadn't raised me with her. She's in my every memory. When I agreed to run away with you to Argentina I was excited, but then after fighting with her I realised that if I leave, she won't be in the rest. She won't be in Harrison's, either. How can I expect him to grow into anything decent if I remove her from his life? What if two serial murderers can't raise a normal child? I never pictured my life without Deb in it. My whole life, I've barely changed. This would be a very massive change."

Hannah's expression has softened as I have opened up. She leans over and kisses me lightly.

"I forget that you get scared, too," she admits. "I didn't have any brothers or sisters so it's hard for me to understand how much you rely on her."

"I'm not saying we can't have a life together," I am quick to remind my girlfriend, "but I don't think it can be as sudden or as clean as we thought. I can't just pick up and leave. There is a lot to think about. I need to protect the people I love, from the effects of being related to me and from dangers like Saxon. I need to take care of the Vogels. I need a plan. Maybe we shouldn't go as far as Argentina, so I can get back here quickly and easily if my family needs me. Maybe I need to live between our home together and here. Maybe you need to leave Miami first and I need to follow after a few months so there's no discernible link. I'm not ready to totally let go of the life I have here. Maybe one day I will be. We can be together, Hannah – I _want_ for us to be together – but we need to do this properly so we can be together without anything holding me back."

She looks at me for a while and then nods understandingly. She seems alright with the compromise, and apparently I've used the right words to persuade her. My phone rings again and I immediately block the call without looking at who is calling.

"I think I can be patient, if that's what I'm looking forward to," she decides finally. "Together forever, with nothing holding either of us back. Maybe we can start off with you staying with me for one week out of every month, and then build to two, then three... And after a few years, this house will be where you stay for a week at Christmas with Harrison and all our seven daughters for your yearly visit to see Deb. And she can stay with us for Thanksgiving."

I manage a surprised laugh. I didn't expect to win her over so easily. I've spent a lifetime with Deb, fighting to get my way, so getting my way after presenting a single reasonable argument still feels alien.

"Seven daughters?" I repeat. "Where did they come from?"

"I always wanted to be a mom," Hannah admits shyly. "I love that you're a dad already, and I love Harrison. I hope that one day – when everything's settled, of course, and if you want to, and when we're ready – we can have kids of our own. Maybe not seven. But a couple. Two or three, maybe."

I smile down at her hands, pleased with the outcome of this discussion. Hannah is willing to compromise. She is willing to work with me to make this work. She is willing to sacrifice some of what she wants so I can have what I want. This is what love is. This is a partnership.

"These seven daughters," I bring up, enjoying the way her face lights up at my acceptance of this possibility. "How many of them will be serial killers?"

"Only Lily Grace," she answers immediately. "The middle child."

"Lily Grace?" I ask. Hannah blushes.

"I have this fantasy of my future," she confesses, "where I have a daughter – or seven, I guess – and name them all after a flower and a virtue."

"So... Begonia Chastity?"

We both laugh at how ridiculous this combination sounds.

"Well, no, not that one. Iris Hope, or Bryony Justice. Violet Faith; Jasmine Joy; Lotus Mercy; Ivy Peace; Jacinta Temperance."

"Now suddenly we have eight. Nine if you include Begonia. Harrison will feel so left out in this enormous family of females."

"We'll start with one or two little flowers," Hannah laughs. She leans forward and we kiss again. I feel so much better than I did a few minutes ago. I enjoy ignoring reality and fantasising about our future, even though I know there are a thousand roadblocks between the now and the then. "You'll be a wonderful father to them."

"I don't know," Deb interrupts. We pull apart and look up at her. She has her mobile phone and is using her other hand to cover the mouthpiece. "Dexter already has a daughter named after a flower and he can't even answer his fucking phone for her." She brings the phone back to her ear. "Astor, I'm putting you on speakerphone, alright?"

She arranges the phone beside mine on the arm of the chair and stands beside me with her arms folded. She's still super angry.

"Shoot, babe," she tells the phone, voice giving no clues as to her actual mood.

"Hello? Dexter?" Astor Bennett's uncertain voice is altered and made tinny by the speaker but it is unmistakeable. I lean forward to be better heard.

"Hey, Astor. How are you? How's Cody?"

"I'm good. Cody is still being annoying, as always, but he's got a _girlfriend_ now so he's dressing better and actually brushing his teeth with some regularity and without being told to."

I laugh and wonder when all this happened. Rita's children are growing up. Astor will be driving on her own soon. Cody has a girlfriend. I picture the adorable children as I first met them. They have changed so much. I have changed only slightly. I love them the same as I did when I chose to consider them as my family, after my mistaken fling with Lila, but they have changed. Like Deb, they are dynamic, ever changing.

"Wow, I can't imagine Cody with a girlfriend," Deb comments. "That must be weird."

"It is super weird," Astor confirms. "Sari is her name. She's alright. Actually..." She pauses. "Actually, I don't like her at all. She's a self-righteous vegan who comes over for dinner and lectures Grandma about the poor suffering chickens. It's really annoying. But I see Cody and Sari walking around at school together holding hands and it's so strange to think, that girl's boyfriend is my brother. I mean, he's still my stupid little brother, but to her, he's someone else. They seem to really like each other."

I look up at my own sister. She is looking straight at me and I know we're thinking the same thing. She and I are in the same boat as Astor. We've both been in relationships the other didn't approve of for various reasons, but in my case it's usually been because Deb has been unable to reconcile her fundamental beliefs with my choices. She's staunch. My being with Hannah is a huge insult to her very being.

"Who the fuck would want to be a vegan?" Deb asks after a silence that is one beat too long. "It'd be bad enough to go without meat – imagine going without fucking eggs and cheese and shit."

"I know, right?" Astor is cheered by Deb's agreement. I always struggled to bond with Rita's daughter. By the time I met her, she was just that little bit too old, too worldly, for me to connect with. Cody was younger. He didn't remember what his dad used to do to his mom, and he just wanted a dad to love him. Astor frequently rebuffed my attempts at closeness, but she has always loved Deb. Astor and Deb have a special bond. I think she recalls the night Deb came to her door and saved their family from Paul.

"Anyway," my stepdaughter redirects, "I was ringing to find out whether you're coming up next week?"

Hannah blinks at me, confused. I look back to Deb for help. She points inside and mouths, "Fridge". I get up and race inside to follow this clue. I hear Deb's voice as she continues talking to Astor.

"He's such a dope; he completely mixed up the dates," she teases. I stand in front of her refrigerator and search the papers secured to it with magnets. "I should have reminded him. He's been talking about it ever since he got your letter but I think he thought it was the weekend after." She calls out to me, "The purple invitation is under the phone bill, remember? Where you left it."

I throw her a grateful look. I spot the phone bill and rip it aside. Beneath it I find, addressed to 'Auntie Deb', a handmade invitation to Astor's sixteenth birthday party, to be held next weekend, a few days before her actual birthday. She's hosting a masquerade ball. I run my fingers over the lace she has painstakingly glued along the edging of the purple card. I have never seen this before, though now I recall her telling me she was planning to have a party. I cannot believe I forgot this in all the excitement of meeting Vogel, training Zach and reviving my relationship with Hannah. I wonder how long it has been since I checked my mailbox. My own invitation must be still inside. I pull Deb's copy gently from the surface of the fridge door, aware that this was made with love by my daughter's own hands, and walk back outside.

"Your Aunt Deb's totally right," I say, coming to stand opposite my sister. "I had the dates mixed up. I don't know why, but I thought you'd picked the weekend _after_ your birthday. I'm so sorry, kiddo."

"Oh," Astor says, while Deb glares at me. "Can you still come?"

"I don't know." I try to ignore Deb's look. There is so much to do here – planning my life with Hannah, killing Saxon and Vogel – that I can't imagine fitting something else in over the next few weeks. "I took the following weekend off work. I don't know if I can change holidays on such short notice."

"Right, of course." Astor tries to sound upbeat and mature, but I know I've upset her. "Can Harrison still come with Aunt Deb?"

Deb narrows her eyes even further at me and I cave. I nod.

"The little guy and I will definitely be there," she assures the phone. "I'm coming up for the whole week. It's going to be awesome. I'm going to get Harrison a Spiderman mask. Your party's the Saturday night, right? Well, that morning we're leaving the boys at home with your grandparents and you and I are going out for a day of shopping and manicures and pampering. My treat."

"Really?" Astor demands, surprised and distracted from her disappointment. Deb has saved the day again. "Won't you hate every minute of that?"

"Probably," Deb admits, "but you are my only niece and you'll only turn sixteen once. Plus it's a masquerade _ball_ so you'll need OTT makeup and hair to match the amazing dress and mask you got."

"Wow, thanks Aunt Deb! Is this my birthday present? You're right, it is going to be awesome!"

"No, I've got you a real present, too." Deb smiles at Astor's squeal of excitement. She smirks up at me. "But it's nothing compared with what Dexter's got for you. You just wait – it's going to blow you away."

Astor begins excitedly guessing what we've got for her and Deb narrows her eyes at me again. I stare back at her. She knows full well I haven't organised anything yet. I haven't even thought about it. She's dropped me right in it. But I'm not thinking about that. I'm looking into my sister's eyes – eyes like mine, the same eyes she's always looked at me through – and I'm hearing my daughter's excited voice and I'm thinking of another birthday, a very long time ago. I recall another teenage birthday girl, a different brother and a different absent father. I see the cake, the candles and the fire reflected off Deb's glasses, I see the excitement of having this very simple birthday celebration: just a cake on a coffee table, and a night with her dad and brother all to herself. In the same image I see the magical moment interrupted by Matthews, Harry throwing the bottle in anger and then Deb, the miserable birthday girl, abandoning her birthday cake to get the vacuum cleaner.

Deb lost a birthday, and a thousand other special moments, to our father's frustration with the justice system. It was his obsession. It was what drove him to make me. He loved her so much but never noticed what his choices were doing to her life. Now, a generation later, here I stand in the very same moment. My daughter is all but ready to light her candles, the moment is all magic for her, and I'm choosing my desires – Hannah, my urge to kill – over my daughter.

In this moment I am all the worst parts of Harry.

Deb's arms are still tightly folded across her chest. I extend a hand on impulse and grab one of her hands from under her elbow. Her expression barely changes but I detect her surprise in her eyes.

"Astor," I interrupt the guessing game, which has now escalated to ponies, "I'm not promising anything yet, but I'm going to try so hard to be there at your birthday party."

Deb stares at me. Hannah stands abruptly, frowning.

"Dexter, will you really?" Astor sounds so relieved, so pleased. I try to picture her but I can only picture Deb at her age, hair long and in need of a cut and that awkward smile.

"My dad missed heaps of mine and Deb's birthdays," I tell her, and the two women present, as explanation. "Deb's right, you'll only turn sixteen once. It's important. If I can find a way, I want to be there."

Hannah reaches out and takes my other hand, appealing to me.

"Dexter," she breathes, "don't. Don't leave me here alone."

"What about your work?" Astor mentions reluctantly. "What if they don't let you change your holidays?"

It's a way out. Hannah nods encouragingly, wanting me to take this excuse and run with it. She squeezes my hand hopefully. At the end of my other arm is my sister. She levels a threatening look at me.

"Don't. You. Dare." She makes no sound but articulates slowly and fully so I cannot mistaken the message.

I was wrong. There are now _four_ significant women in my life. Astor is not a little girl anymore. She waits with bated breath on the end of this phone line for my decision. In each hand I hold one of the others. To choose Deb is to choose Astor as well, and to kill Vogel to avenge our well-meaning but shitty father. To choose Hannah is to step away from my duty to my family and to focus on _us_.

"Dexter? Aunt Deb? Are you still there?"

We've been silent too long. I look between my lover and my sister, knowing I must disappoint one. It's a difficult choice while holding both of their hands.

"Please don't leave me here alone. Stay with me," Hannah begs quietly, too softly to be heard by my stepdaughter. "Don't leave me in Miami to be caught by Clayton or killed by Saxon."

These possibilities had not occurred to me and I understand her argument. I open my mouth to disappoint my sister and daughter, but Deb gets in first.

"Don't be Dad."

"If they won't give me the day off I'll take a sick day," I promise Astor. "I'll be there. I won't be able to stay the week but I'll be there for your party. Tell Cody to choose me a mask."

Astor is ecstatic and thanks me profusely. I have made her day. I still cannot picture her in my mind, probably because I am still looking at my sister and seeing young Debra. I cannot fix all the wrong I've done to her, directly or indirectly through our father, but I can stop doing it to Astor.

Hannah is staring at me like she doesn't know me. Astor is called away by her grandfather to help with dinner and she says goodbye. Deb and I tell her we love her and will see her soon. She hangs up.

In the long silence that follows, Deb unfolds her arms and lets them drop. She keeps hold of my hand and we are standing there, looking at each other and thinking a lot of contradictory things about our father. The tight grip on my other hand begins to loosen as Hannah comes to terms with my blatant disregard for her wishes in choosing Deb over her. But she doesn't understand the choice because she doesn't fully understand _me_ and how Deb, Astor, Cody, Harrison and Harry are pieces of me. Hannah releases my hand in disgust.

"This is an epic mistake," she says coldly, and stalks away inside. I'm left standing on the patio holding only my sister's hand. We don't say anything. It's been a day since I broke her and brought her back from the beach, and how many times in that day have we started and progressed through this awful cycle of ours? I have lost count, but here she is, returned to me, loving me again and happy and ready for the next round, whenever that may begin.


	6. Chapter 6

No beautiful moment ever lasts quite long enough. After a few seconds Deb drops my hand and steps past me to grab her phone back.

"Takeaway it is, then, for the next week," she mutters. "Or until she's over herself." I stare at her, uncomprehending, and she gives me a 'duh' look. "Like I'm going to eat anything out of the fridge that _she_ might have touched after _that_. I'll find myself back in the fucking hospital."

I sigh, gazing into the house after Hannah. She's angry and upset and I can understand why, but I still feel a little bit like I've just dodged a bullet. Debra's fury is much more frightening than anything Hannah can throw at me, making Hannah's anger much preferable to the alternative.

"You don't need to live off burritos for the week. I'll talk to her."

Deb looks unconvinced. She looks away. I wait for her, feeling that she has more to say. A moment passes and she looks back to me.

"You'd better fucking mean what you said," she threatens. "You'd better not disappoint that girl."

"I'm going to be there," I promise. "I'm going to make this work. All of it." She scoffs at me; frustrated, I rush on. "Listen to me. I'm going to be there for her. I'm going to sing 'happy birthday' and watch her blow out the candles and let her make her wish and then I'm going to eat my slice of that cake. I'm not going to walk out in the middle to talk to my boss about work. I'm not going to throw a bottle. And I'm _not_ going to have my birthday girl cleaning up my mess like Harry did to you."

I didn't intend on saying all that but now I've said it and Deb is quiet, with sad eyes. She is remembering the same shit birthday. Our dad went to no effort for her – what should have been a party, or a dinner at a nice restaurant, was only a cheap cake on a coffee table with no guests. And Deb had still been happy with so little. And Harry hadn't even managed to spend that one magical moment on her.

I loved my father, and I hate Vogel for what she did to him – to our family – and I will avenge this wrong, but I do not miss Harry Morgan. I do not miss watching him humiliate his own daughter as she struggled to reach out to him and fought hard to be good enough for his love. I do not miss Deb's accusing eyes as Harry, without fail, chose me over her.

 _My_ daughter should never have to feel that I am choosing something over her.

Neither should Deb, ever again. Doesn't mean I won't do it. It should. But I know me, and I know her. I'll hurt her again. The only question is when.

Deb takes a tiny step closer to me, and I wonder whether she wants to be held. I'm wary and do nothing.

"Dad was an asshole, wasn't he?" she asks softly, voice loaded with hurts. Her eyes are cast down with embarrassment as she recalls her wasted efforts. I nod, knowing we are on exactly the same page.

"Yeah, he was. But he loved us. And he didn't deserve what he got."

Deb's eyes meet mine, and they are sharp.

"Neither did I."

She brushes past me and I reach for her, murmuring her name, but she leans away.

"Fuck off," she says, resentfully but without bite. She snatches Astor's invitation up from the seat I dropped it onto. "I'm still mad with you, too."

She goes inside and I follow. She returns to her room; I leave her be, something I should have done months ago when she asked me to.

The kitchen, dining and living space is empty. Harrison is still snoring gently when I check the spare room. I find Hannah in the bathroom, sitting on the edge of the bath with that cell phone on her lap. She glares at me as I enter and shut the door behind myself.

"I hate it here," she says angrily. "I hate being trapped in your sister's house. I have nowhere to run when I need space. I feel so powerless. This whole place is _hers_ and there's no escaping it. I hate it."

I sit on the lid of the toilet.

"Who were you going to call?" I ask gently, gesturing to the phone. She turns it over in her hands.

"I don't know. Arlene. I don't have anyone else." She laughs bitterly. "Except you. And you aren't exactly onside."

I lean forward so I can rub her knee. I don't need to worry about getting slapped away or punched or screamed at. Hannah frowns at my hand but does not move away.

"I _am_ on your side," I assure her. "I love you. I want to be with you, protect you and keep you safe."

"Then why are you leaving me here alone?" Hannah implores immediately. "You'll be hours away. Anything could happen. Saxon could find me, or Vogel could tip off the police that you're keeping me here. You're supposed to be my boyfriend. You're supposed to protect me."

"I'm supposed to protect a lot of people," I realise. "I have to go. It'll only be a night, and then I'll be back."

"But _why_ do you have to go? Protecting my life should be more important than a birthday invitation."

"You'll be safe. I have to do this, for my daughter."

"She's not even your real daughter," Hannah quips. My face must show my stony, shut-down emotional response to that, because she quickly back-tracks. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"Blood doesn't make family," I tell her, coldly. "Astor is my daughter and Cody is my son. They're Harrison's siblings. That makes them my children."

"I know, I'm sorry-"

"And Debra is my sister. Not because of blood but because fate gave her to me. She's always been my sister. She always will be. And I'll always be her brother."

Hannah grabs my hands as my voice escalates. I see her fear in her eyes. I recognise it. It's the same fear I feel when Deb is mad with me and is pulling away. Hannah is scared of losing me. This realisation, and the fact that she and I can feel the same things, quiets me.

"Dexter, I am really sorry," she insists. "Please don't be angry. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that about your daughter. It was disrespectful, to you and to your family. I know your family isn't traditional. I know you love them. I'm sorry."

She rubs my hands, continuously moving. She's terrified of losing me. I marvel at how she is reacting. This is _the same_ as how I feel about losing _my_ people. Does this make my reaction normal? Or does this make Hannah and I both possessive, self-serving monsters?

"I _do_ love them," I agree, calming down. "That's why I need to go to Orlando next weekend. I need to protect Astor."

"From what?" Hannah asks, confused.

"It's complicated. I saw all this before, with my dad and my sister. I watched her grow up with a father who didn't care. It damaged her. I can protect Astor from memories like the ones Deb and I have." I turn my hands to catch Hannah's worried ones. "You said you love that I'm a father. I have to do this little thing, as a father. I can't let Astor and Cody grow up like Deb and I did. They've had it bad enough. I wouldn't be a decent dad, a decent man, if I failed to turn up to my daughter's sweet sixteenth birthday."

Hannah is quiet and thoughtful for a long time. She plays with my fingers.

"I understand," she says after several minutes. "I see why you have to go." She smiles wryly. "I actually love that you need to go. You're so devoted. It's probably why I'm in love with you."

"It'll only be a night, I promise. I'll drive there in the morning, get there around lunchtime, spend the Saturday afternoon with Harrison and Cody. Deb will have Astor at some beauty parlour. I'll do the party that night. I'll drive home the next day. I'll be back by Sunday afternoon."

"And we'll have the house to ourselves for a few days?" Hannah asks, offering a tiny, hopeful smile. "No other Morgans?"

"None," I agree. "Deb and Harrison won't be back until the Wednesday night."

I'm suddenly struck with inspiration. A number of disjointed thoughts and plans instantly click together with the perfection and willingness of Lego blocks. I draw back, thinking it through quickly. I see lots of holes that need careful attention, but I can also see it working.

"That's it," I say, shaking my head. "Deb will be out of town. Harrison will be safe with her. No one will know I'm here."

"Dexter, what are you talking about?"

"I know now what we'll do." I am focussed now, filling in the blanks in my quickly forming plan. "I can do it all. I don't need to sacrifice anything. I can pick you both."

"What?" Hannah doesn't understand the reference, which I'm pretty glad of.

"Nothing. Listen." I lean forward again, and she leans close, conspiratorially. "We'll use my visit to Orlando as our cover. That's when I'll kill Saxon, and we'll get you out of Miami." I smile. "We'll kill you."

Her smile falters. "Kill me?"

"We'll fake your death. I'll kill Vogel and Saxon together and make it look like a murder-suicide, a mother who couldn't deal with what she's created or a vengeful son who strikes out at his long-lost mom and then regrets it." Yes – fitting, either way. "I'll plant your DNA and Saxon's prints on a kill tool and leave it somewhere the forensic team can find it. If we leave enough of your blood, too, it can look like you've bled out. Miami Metro will be on this one, and I'll run the blood work, but once I tell them it's yours, Batista will pull me off the case – conflict of interest." I smile lovingly at Hannah, and she understands, but I see she's dubious about this plan, especially the part about me having little control over the outcome of the investigation. Luckily, I have considered this. "But Deb will have been out of town, no possible link, and she'll probably be leading it. She'll be able to pull strings from the inside." I smile wider, pleased with how this is falling together. "You'll get on a plane and disappear. The Hannah McKay search will be closed up, you'll be declared dead and everything will go back to normal. Except..."

"Except, I'll be waiting for you, in Argentina," Hannah agrees, hope lighting her eyes finally. "Dexter, could this really work? What happens next?"

"Next? I wait a month or two, and then take a fortnight off to take Harrison for a holiday to see the penguins in Argentina. Or whatever animal they have in the place we choose."

We smile at each other.

"It's a very small window of time to get things sorted," I concede. "I'll call Vogel tomorrow and fix things with her so I don't need to worry about her sending cops or killers after us in the meantime. I'll book the days off – Saturday through til the Wednesday – so work will assume I've been with Deb the whole time. While I'm away, you can sort out your flights and somewhere to stay once you get to your destination." I laugh with surprise. "This can work."

"It can," Hannah agrees. She squeezes my hands. "Why not book flights and things earlier? I can do that today, or tomorrow... it's not like I have anything else to do here."

"No, leave it until the last minute," I say. "Elway and Clayton could be checking the passenger lists, so the less time your ticket exists, the better for us. Besides," I add, "it'll give you something to do while I'm not here."

She nods and we fall into a contented silence for a while. I notice that she looks like she wants to say something else.

"What is it?"

"It's just..." She blushes. "I'm going to miss you."

"It's only a weekend, one night," I remind her, but she shakes her head.

"No, after that. After you kill Saxon and Vogel, and I'm on some plane to nowhere. It could be months and months before you think the coast is well and truly clear and you come visit me. What if it doesn't blow over as quickly as you expected? I could be alone for the rest of the year. And what if..."

"What if what?" I try to catch and hold her worried gaze. She seems so delicate compared with the other women I have loved.

"What if absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder?" she whispers. "What if the investigation isn't dropped and you're stuck here for so long that you give up on us? Six months apart and you were totally over me. That again, or longer, and I'm scared you won't come for me. I'm scared... your sister will talk you out of it."

"She'll try," I agree immediately, "but you're wrong. I wasn't totally over you."

"You didn't miss me anymore, though." It makes her sad, I can see.

"I didn't think you'd be back," I admitted. "I'd accepted that. I'm glad you are."

"Me, too." She pauses, then sits up straight and quickly says, "I know; after the birthday, after you've killed the Vogels, you come _with me_. I'll book two tickets, we'll fly out together and find somewhere. We'll stay there. When Debra gets back here with Harrison she'll tell the truth, that she has no idea where you are and no one will know any different. After a few months she can visit us, and bring Harrison back to you." She is wringing my hands and her eyes sparkle with daring, with hope. "We never have to be apart again."

I disentangle my hands from hers and frown, pitying her but also privately annoyed. Has she not been listening? Her plan is an awful one, with no consideration of all the conditions I put to her before.

"Uh," I say slowly. "I don't think that's a very good idea." When she actually looks confused, I sigh with barely withheld frustration. "Hannah, did you not notice my sister beating the crap out of me yesterday over this very same plan? It doesn't fit. It doesn't work for anyone. I'm not leaving her here to explain where I've run off to, without warning her first, and I'm definitely not abandoning my son for _a few months_. It leaves us even worse off than at square one – Deputy Marshal Clayton and Elway will be even more certain I've run off with you and they'll have both my sister and son to use against me to bring me back. And if Deb is arrested for covering for us? Where does Harrison go?"

"Into protective services," Hannah answers promptly, "so you swoop back into Miami and snatch him from his foster home-"

"While my sister rots in the cell that should be reserved for me," I finish coldly. "Snatch Harrison from a foster home? Because that won't be traumatic for him. What kind of father do you think I am? What kind of brother? I'm a shit one, no question, but I will not take a path that brings Debra down."

Disgusted with her, I stand and go to the door. I wrench it open. Hannah leaps after me and latches onto my arm, begging me to stop and listen.

"Dexter, I'm sorry," she pleads, tears shining in her eyes. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. I wasn't thinking. I don't want your sister in jail, honestly – you're right, it doesn't help anyone, not even me. And I don't want Harrison traumatised. I just want..." She sniffs, somewhat pitifully. "I just want _you_. I just don't want to lose you, ever. And like you, I've had an awful day. I've been thinking sad, scary things about you leaving me and I'm so tired. Everything I'm saying is coming out all wrong."

I stand in the doorway, trying not to be mad. She strokes my arm rapidly, wanting me to be calm and forgiving. She means it, she's scared.

"We'll do it your way," she promises. A tear escapes her eye. She wipes it away with the back of her hand. "I'll go, and I'll wait for you. We'll talk all the time until you get there, though, right? So you don't forget me."

"I'm not going to forget you," I insist. "Like you said, I'm going to be here with Deb complaining about you day after day. It'll be hard to forget you." She cracks a hesitant smile. I walk her over to the computer in the living room. "There's a lot to plan. I need to find something for Astor now that Deb's set me up and you need to find us a destination. Why don't we start researching?"

It cheers her up. We look at maps of South America. We look at Mexico, Cuba, Belize, The Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Venezuela, all the nearest neighbours. Unlike normal people looking into an international move, who might want a nice climate or interesting cultural aspects, we're looking specifically for countries that don't tend to extradite to the United States. Like normal people, however, we think it would also be nice to pick somewhere that isn't in a constant state of civil war, so this is one of our factors.

"You know, I always dreamed it would be Argentina," Hannah muses after an hour of web surfing, "but Cuba does look amazing, too. And it's so close, you'd be able to visit your sister and kids all the time. It would be very possible to jet between here and there. You're right, Argentina is a long way away and people will wonder why you're going there. No one would think twice about you popping over to Cuba for a weekend. It's a plus that they probably won't deport me, either."

" _If_ they find you," I add, looping an affectionate arm around her shoulders, "which we'll ensure they won't."

Deb's bedroom door opens and she comes out. I smile over at her, hoping she's less pissy with me after all that thinking time. She grabs her keys and leans on the kitchen bench.

"I'm going to grab some dinner," she tells us. "Want anything?"

"Oh, you don't need to go out and get anything," Hannah says brightly, jumping up from the computer chair. "I'll pull something together. Do you like sushi? I saw rice in your pantry. We don't have any rice paper or seaweed wrap but I've done it before with sesame seeds-"

"I don't want any sushi," Deb interrupts, and Hannah visibly deflates halfway to the fridge. "I want something you haven't spiked. Something like a juicy fucking burger and fries. And a Coke. Which I'll half-empty onto the beach and top up with rum." She pushes away from the bench, looking ready to leave, but something on the screen catches her eye. She frowns and moves around to better see what we're doing.

"Cuba?" she asks, confused. I try smiling at her again. Argentina was a dirty word; leaving Deb forever was unforgivable. Surely she'll accept the Cuba scenario, in which Vogel and Saxon are killed, Hannah's hunters are put off, Deb gets to close three high-profile murders and I live between my hometown and destination.

"Much closer than Argentina," I say, trying to sound perky. Hoping my tone can influence her mood. Like that ever worked before. "Deb, I've got a plan."

Deb grabs the front of my shirt and yanks me close. The action is quick and almost violent; Hannah jumps.

"Fuck you and your plans," Deb hisses in my face, so close I can feel her breath against my skin. She holds me like that for a second longer and I see the resentment in her deep eyes. Then she releases me with a strong push and turns away as I stumble back against the chair. I grab it for balance but it shifts on its wheels. It takes me several seconds to regain my footing, and by that time she's at the door.

"Deb!" I call, hurrying after her. She slams the door in my face and I have to turn the handle and open it before I can follow. I chase her to where we left her car two hours ago. The sun is heading for the horizon now and I can see the orange of sunset lighting the dust on her windscreen. "Deb, stop and listen. It's not what you think."

"It never is. It's always worse," she mutters, pulling on her drivers' side door handle. Her reach is miscalculated and her fingers slip off. I cringe. I hear the thud of the handle flicking back into place, and her sharp gasp of pain as her short fingernails are pulled back unnaturally. She stops and raises her fingers to her mouth. It's dishonourable but it's this painful little distraction that allows me to catch up with her. She sees me closing in and tries again to open the door, this time with her other hand, and more carefully. She succeeds and begins to open the door, but I reach her and press my side into the car door. My body weight outdoes the strength of her left arm, and the door shuts with a snap.

She doesn't try again. She doesn't run. She doesn't rant at me, not yet, anyway. We both just lean into the side of the car while she nurses her sore hand.

"Stupid fucking door," she mumbles, fingers pressed against her lips. "It fucking hurts. I hope you're happy."

I don't have anything to say to that, at least not anything that won't inflame her emotions. I reach over and take her hand. She tries to stop me, frowning and muttering various obscenities. I hold the hand tightly.

"Don't," I instruct her firmly. My firmness seems to surprise her, because she does as I say. "Just let me, alright?"

She lets me. I press her sore hand between both of mine, warming the throbbing fingertips. I feel the heat beneath her skin, her body's immediate reaction to its pain.

"What's the deal with Cuba?" she asks finally. "This had better be good, or you're getting your leg wedged under my tyre and I'm going to reverse over it a half fucking dozen times."

"It's... better," I say momentarily, not entirely doubting her threat. I don't see how she can actually carry out what she's saying, but I am convinced that there will be some other non-preferable outcome. "Hannah is going to leave Miami while you're in Orlando. She's going to Cuba. After a few months I'm going to go and visit her, for a week or so, and then start making more regular trips. I'm going to fake her death to get Elway and Clayton off our tails. I'm going to kill Saxon and Vogel together and leave Hannah's DNA at the crime scene. You'll be away so no one will suspect anything of you. Deb, I really think this can work."

She thinks on this for a long time, and I wonder whether she's thinking through the holes of the plan and considering ways to plug them. Deb is good and just and light – all the things I am not – but she is also an intelligent, cunning survivor. Like me. Of all the people in my life, she has survived me the longest. She doesn't feel like I do but she _is_ capable of thinking like me. She can see connections many other people miss. It's what makes her so amazing at her job.

"Cuba," she says finally. I nod, hoping this means she's analysed the plan and found it suitable.

"Cuba," I agree. "What do you think? There are lots of details to work out, but we'll talk about that when you get back with dinner."

"I think..." She slowly pries her hand out from between mine. "I think you're planning to move to Cuba." She carefully pulls on the door handle and we both hear it release. She leans away from the door and waits for me to do the same. We both shift far enough away that the door can be opened, and she rounds the door to stand with one foot inside. She looks into my eyes and I see something I don't usually see in them: finality. I don't like it. Nothing is ever final with her – there's always another beer, another round to play, another cycle to begin and end, another way to get the bad guy, another chance.

"What? What is that look for?" I demand, holding the door open so she can't get in and close it behind her. She smiles very briefly, almost painfully.

"I just realised something, is all," she says. She looks all over my face, taking in the injuries she's inflicted on me. Without seeing inside her, I know I've done much worse to her. Her gaze fixes on my eyes. "I realised you're really going to do this. You're going to go. Not straightaway," she allows, when I try to interrupt, "I get that, but yeah, eventually, you'll stay there longer and longer and then you just won't come back. And," she finishes, trying once again to smile, but it looks broken, "there's nothing I can do to change your mind. I've run out of things to say to keep you here."

She climbs into her seat and starts the car. Not knowing what else to say or do, I numbly close her door for her. She clicks her seatbelt on and winds the window down. She arranges her sunglasses on her face and pushes her hair away from her ears, giving me a precious second in which to fix this. Whatever this is. I don't know, but I don't like it.

"Deb," I appeal, but have nothing else to say. She's right. She's nailed the plan without even needing to hear it. If I want a life with Hannah it needs to be something Hannah is willing to commit to – that something being forever. But forever is a long time to live with missing someone.

"Dexter, it's alright. Just do what you gotta do," Deb echoes softly, and I hear my own words in her mouth. Those words are from a moment many months ago, when I put my life in her hands and expected to never see her again. Is there some poetry to her using those words now? What is she really saying? She puts the car into reverse. "Goodbye, Dexter."

She backs out of the drive and I stare after her. I am not sure what is happening but I am unwilling to dissect it too much, lest I discover a sinister meaning. Then possible sinister meanings begin to hit me without my consent, and I panic at the worst of them.

Deb is leaving _me_.

"Wait!" I shout, running after her. The BMW is in the middle of the street, paused while she changes gears. I can't stop her from leaving – trying to do so might result in her threat becoming a reality – but it occurs to me that I must ensure she comes back. I run right to the edge of the curb and watch her helplessly as she begins to roll forward. I yell the first stupid thing that comes to mind: "Bring me back a cheeseburger! I don't want sushi."

I know she hears me because she casts me an odd look in her mirror. But she still drives off.

She merges with other traffic and disappears into the distance. There is nothing to do but return to the house. Hannah is preparing said sushi on the bench.

"My sushi isn't that bad," she comments dryly, indicating that she heard me. I walk in with a sigh and collapse into a chair at the table. I lower my head into my hands.

How badly have I just fucked my own life? The best person in it just drove off. I tell myself she will be back soon, cheeseburger in hand and scathing comment about the useless teenager working the drive-through on her lips. But I don't know this for a fact. I know that I will always be drawn back to Deb because I _need_ her, because I am the monster who feeds off her goodness and sucks her dry, but there is no magical rule that says she _has_ to come back to me. She doesn't need me. She loves me, she wants me in her life (sometimes) but she doesn't need me. In fact, she's better off without me. It's the cycle, I remind myself, and it can't work without her in it. But that's _my_ cycle. Not hers. I break her all the time; if she really wanted to, surely, she could break me back? Is that what she's doing? Is it possible she's just... gone?

"Daddy?"

I look up to see Harrison standing in the doorway of the spare room. Did my screaming at Debra wake him? I should have woken him after that first hour – now he'll be up for ages. He's looking between me and Hannah, questions in his eyes.

"Hey, Harrison," I greet him, as though everything is normal. I get to my feet, feeling immeasurably tired. Seeing my son both cheers me and worries me. I am pleased to see him because, obviously, I love him, but also because his adorable face convinces me that his aunt will be back, because she loves him, too. I am worried because of what Deb said about explaining Hannah. How will this go down? I gesture lamely in my girlfriend's direction. "You remember Hannah, don't you, Harrison? You've been talking about her."

"Hi, Harrison," Hannah says with a smile. I see her excitement sparkling behind her calm, friendly expression. She is delighted to be around my child.

My son's eyes – hazel like mine and like Deb's – drift over to Hannah with a mix of feelings.

"I remember her," he agrees. Is it me, or does he sound wary? My trusting little boy, who goes to anyone? He comes over to me, an anxious look on his face. I lean down to listen as he whispers to me, "I saw Hannah on the T.V. and Jamie said Hannah was in trouble with Auntie Deb and the other police. She said Hannah has to go to jail."

I look into his worried little eyes. Jamie is a goddess to him. Her word is law. I can't call her a liar and expect him to believe me; if he does, I'm damaging one of his closest relationships. I settle onto my ankles and put my arm comfortingly around my son's shoulders.

"I saw Hannah on T.V., too," I tell him, treading carefully. "I think Jamie might have gotten mixed up. Hannah _used_ to be in jail, but only for a little while because someone mean tricked her into doing the wrong thing." A massive deviation from the truth, but not far off what she's been professing to the world for the past decade and a half. Harrison looks doubtful. "She actually helped Auntie Deb to find some of the things" (bodies) "that the mean guy hid." I stand, keeping a loving hand on Harrison's shoulder. "Right now she's making sushi."

The four-year-old still seems uncertain but he is naturally trusting, and I _am_ his dad. He stands on his tip-toes to see the bench where Hannah is working on the sushi rolls.

"Are you making chicken and avocado ones?" he asks suspiciously. "Or just chicken?"

Hannah is not ready for this line of questioning, and looks about, slightly flustered.

"Um, I do have chicken out," she says, "but there's no avocado. I'm sorry."

"That's alright," Harrison says easily, moving to the table and climbing onto a seat. "I don't like avocado. Just chicken by itself, please."

Accepted. Just like that. I share a look of wonderment with Hannah; hers breaks into a delighted smile. This is what she's always wanted. To be a mom, to care for a child and to make one happy. She gets to work slicing some chicken.

"Coming right up," she assures my boy. "One, or two?"

The conversation for the next twenty-five minutes is easy and light. Harrison becomes bored with waiting for Hannah to cook the rice and eventually gives in to his curiosity about what she is doing. He drags a chair over to watch her work and talks to her about a kid called Alex at his kindergarten and how Alex's bag hook is right next to his, and what Alex brought in for show and tell this week. Hannah listens with keen interest and keeps Harrison engaged with leading questions. I barely participate. I mostly listen, pleased that this bond seems to be forming rather well, but most of my attention is focussed on the background noises. I hear hundreds of cars drive past in that half hour, but none stop. I concentrate hard for the sound of the door opening, in case I miss the sound of the car. I try to resist the almost overwhelming urge to stand at the window and watch for my sister's car.

"Where's Aunt Deb, Daddy?" Harrison asks me presently, looking over his shoulder at me. "Did she go back to work?"

Briefly, panicking, I contemplate saying yes, she's at work. I'm not sure how long she'll be and I'm afraid if I tell my son what she told me, that she's buying a burger, he'll ask me again where she is in another ten minutes, and then ten minutes after that, until it becomes apparent that Deb is not coming home. And then I'll have to accept it. I don't want to accept it, and so I stand there considering lying to my child to avoid the sequence of events that will force me to. Selfish, yes, I know.

"She went to buy some dinner," Hannah steps in for me, taking the decision out of my cowardly hands. She moulds the sticky rice with her fingers. "She doesn't like sushi." My girlfriend looks up at me, quiet challenge in her blue eyes. "Apparently neither does your father."

I am spared having to justify myself by the sound of brakes outside. I'm sure the other two don't hear a thing but I am listening out for it. Hardly daring to breathe in case a noisy exhalation blocks an important sound, I rush to the door and look through the little glass panel. I need to lean to the side to see the vehicle parked outside.

I'm filled with dread immediately. I never used to feel much of anything, but now I seem to experience the full range of emotions, albeit to a lesser extent, generally, than normal people.

The car is not Deb's BMW. But I do recognise it.


	7. Chapter 7

I must admit, I did not expect this car. I'd hoped for Deb's, but when it wasn't, expected it to be Quinn or Batista, either here to arrest me or to tell me Deb's driven her car off a cliff somewhere. It's not them. Thank fuck. I sound like my sister. My other fear was that it may be Deputy Marshal Clayton, having shaken off Elway and returning for a second, more concentrated shot at us.

It's not any of them.

It's Vogel's car.

And there are _two_ people inside.

I return to the kitchen and choose the biggest knife from Deb's knife block. Harrison watches me idly, unconcerned, but Hannah's eyes widen.

"What's going on?" she asks, battling to keep her voice even for my son's sake. I head back to the door.

"It's Dr Vogel," I reply, "and Oliver Saxon." I glance back at her once and see the fear flash across her face. "Keep the doors locked and stay quiet. I'll be right back."

Hannah hurries to the door and locks it behind me as I step out into the evening air. The sun is halfway through setting, a semi-circle of warm orange casting a hazy glare that makes visibility negligible. This is not favourable, but will disadvantage my foes as much as it does me. And if I approach them from this angle and maintain my position, I will have the sun to my back, a step up on them.

What do they want? Why are they here? I heft the blade slightly, moving it into a more comfortable position. The handle presses against the tender wound in the middle of my palm, but as my anger rises I am more able to suppress it. It will hurt again later, but by then, Vogel and Saxon will have bled out in Deb's front yard and I... I don't know. I'm furious.

This surprise appearance puts a serious dent in the latest plans. I am supposed to ring Vogel tomorrow, fix our fight and wait until my son and sister are out of harm's way before killing her and her stupid son. Now they're both here. And even if I can divert them tonight, they can be back at any time. Vogel has brought a killer to my family's hideout.

I make no secret of the cleaver in my hand as I stride out to meet the Vogels. People driving by are squinting into the harsh sunset; they will not notice a non-descript man marching out of a beach house with a blade. But Saxon and Vogel will. They step out of the car, and Vogel walks quickly around to stand with her son. I am reminded of myself, hours ago, moving with the same haste to be near Deb in a tense situation. Solidarity. This is what it means to be family. Especially a family as messed-up as mine, or the Vogels'.

"Dexter," Evelyn Vogel says, relief in her voice and a small smile on her lips. She extends her hands to me and takes a step forward; I point my knife at her and continue on my trajectory.

"Get the fuck out of here," I snarl, feeling that inner monster uncoil, ready to strike out as it did when I saw her earlier this afternoon. Was that only today? It feels years ago. The desire to rip the doctor limb from limb is burning me. And my phone is not with me. Deb is nowhere nearby. Vogel stands no chance.

"Dexter, I am only here to talk," Vogel insists, slightly reprovingly. I shake my head.

"Talk? You don't bring your bulldog along if all you want is to _talk_. Couldn't remember my phone number, huh? What do you think you're playing at, bringing _him_ here?" I stop before them and gesture to her son with my knife.

Saxon folds his arms and keeps his intense gaze on me, but he stays between his mother and the car. Vogel sighs. I see the small cut on her jaw line and feel incredible annoyance. My hand is worse off than her stupid face, and _she_ was the one being attacked!

"Dexter," she says for a third time, sounding exasperated, as though _I_ am being unreasonable. "I have been trying to call you for the past hour, with no answer. In the end I called your sister-"

"You stay _the fuck_ away from my sister," I demand, forcefully. If I'm not allowed to talk to Deb right now, then Vogel certainly doesn't get to, either. My hand almost shakes with the unsprung tension of wanting, so badly, to sever this woman's windpipe. I hate her. Maybe she did try to call me, I don't know – my phone is still set to vibrate, still outside on the chair. I don't care. She continues as though I didn't interrupt.

"- and she said a few choice words to me, and told me the only thing holding her back from saying worse was a family of little kids standing in line in front of her," Vogel goes on, "which led me to believe she must have spoken at length with you. I presumed you would be here."

"Well done," I snap. Secretly I am pleased she has mentioned this. Deb really is in line buying burgers somewhere. "Sounds like some intense detective work."

"And I have brought Daniel with me," Vogel adds, turning to smile briefly at her son, "as insurance against your temper. This afternoon's misunderstanding has the potential to be very damaging to our relationship and I am here to talk it through with you before too much resentment can build between us."

I raise my eyebrows, surprised out of some of my rage. _The potential to be very damaging_? Uh, yeah. Consider our relationship damaged. Consider resentment already built. Like, a whole wall of it.

"I don't think there's much left to be said," I comment coldly. "What's done can't be undone, can it?"

"I realise you're upset about what happened with Harry," Evelyn says, calmly, in her best psychiatrist voice. "I can see that my failure to explain my motives more gently has triggered an animalistic rage response in you. I understand how you would perceive my long-term secrecy of this fact as a betrayal. I am very sorry for making you feel like this, Dexter."

She's very good, isn't she? All 'I' statements, taking responsibility for my feelings so I am not pushed into a defensive mode. I am not sold, however. I still hate her. I will still murder her.

"I am not angry with you for hurting me today, Dexter." The doctor smiles as though I am a child who thinks he will be in trouble. She has me all wrong. In this moment, I am not afraid of trouble. I am looking for it. I feel my control slowly sliding through my fingers. I relish the sensation and know it is not long now before I am past saving. "I understand. It was my fault. I went about it in the wrong way. I think, with time, you will agree I did the right thing about Harry, but I should have told you differently. Just look at you," she adds, smiling at me and gesturing to my armed and ready stance. "You were made for this. Harry forgot. He also forgot how carefully we'd built you – to _un_ build you might have sent you off the rails completely, driven you to kill and destroy those close to you."

I hear and understand her closing statement and agree that this was a probable risk to my father's final plan, but also reflect that, regardless, I have become exactly that: a destructive force that consumes those who get too close. Rita is the best example, of course, but dozens of others are dead because of me, without my ever raising a knife to their throats – Paul Bennett, Ellen Wolf, Maria La Guerta, Zach Hamilton and my neighbour, Cassie, to name the first ones that jump to mind. And Debra has been broken open countless times since she walked into that church and changed both our lives forever.

"I want us to forgive each other," Vogel summarises. I tighten my grip on the knife. I bet she does. She's got it easy. I scared her and gave her a little scratch, big deal. She's done worse to me and mine than I've done to her. "I want to fix this."

I try to contain my anger and swallow the temptation to launch myself at her and slash her open. It would only take one swipe. I am quite sure I am faster than Saxon; I can kill this bitch before he can stop me, but I am not confident I can withdraw and be ready for his counter. I consider that this is a game of chess – I am the red knight, a sneaky and versatile piece preparing to take the enemy queen. But in doing so I lose said knight to the enemy bishop, and then there is nothing between him and my most precious piece – Harrison – inside the house. Check. In chess you cannot put yourself into check, a forbidden move, for good reason. I need to reposition. I need to wait.

"Your dear son tried to chase me down today," I mention, buying time, calculating. I eye Daniel Vogel critically, looking for weaknesses. He is similar in build to myself. He doesn't appear to be armed, but I cannot be certain. He probably isn't emotionally and physically exhausted. He has no injured hand, no burn on his leg and no exploitable cuts and bruises on his face. I have the sun to my back but physically I am disadvantaged. I hate him for it, even though all my injuries are my very own fault. His eyes are piercing, so bright.

"I was upset, too," Saxon tells me, evenly. "You had attacked my mother and threatened her life. I wanted to make you answer for it. When I returned to her, she explained your motivation. I realised there was no need for me to be angry. I would – and did – react in the same way."

More 'I' statements. Trying to calm me. Saxon has no need to want me calm. I have already deduced that he has the upper hand here, and I am sure he has done the same math and come to the same conclusion. So what is he doing?

"Dexter," Vogel appeals to me, "Daniel is my son. He was worried about me. You were quite a fright when you left my house today. You can understand why he would give chase. You would have done the same in that situation. I am sure you have, many times before, pursued a threat to your family. In any case," she redirects, more businesslike now, "I hope we can put this behind us. I hope we can go back to how we were. All of us. We are not like other people, your family and mine. We are much stronger together than we are apart."

I analyse this proposal carefully. _All of us_. _Stronger together_. She is requesting me to accept Saxon and to not kill him, but more than that, she wants me to align myself with them. She wants things to back to _how they were_. Does she mean when I was hunting and killing for her? I'm uncertain.

"I don't think I understand your meaning," I say eventually.

"We should not be enemies," Saxon explains. His words sound automatic. I hear no conviction. "We could all so easily destroy each other, but for what? A trail of blood, a mix of mine and yours and all the people we love?"

"You don't love anybody," I quip. Vogel glares at me; Saxon does not argue, but continues as if I did not interrupt.

"We achieve nothing by working against each other. You and I, we're not like everyone else. And we know too much about the other to feel comfortable with the other out there, unless we know we're on the same side."

I recognise the thinly veiled threat, but I don't let this show. He can unravel my life very easily if I move against him. I'm starting to understand their motives, I think. Dr Vogel wants me back under her thumb. She wants to survive me, but also to control me, as she did before, before I realised. I don't yet know for what purpose, but she definitely wants something from me. Saxon... I think he wants to subdue me. I don't think he wants me onside. I think he wants my back turned so he can put a knife through it. Or a powersaw through the back of my skull.

He wants me for a victim as much as I want him.

I should kill him first. Evelyn is manipulative but soft. She cannot take me out. If I incapacitate her son first, I can kill her without much effort second. Too bad she stands between us.

"We're a family, Dexter." Dr Vogel's smile is intended to be kind but I see its cruelty. The dying light of the almost fully set sun casts deep shadows on her lined face. "Come back and be part of it."

I realise the chess metaphor is no metaphor at all. The Vogels are playing me as surely and seriously as I am trying to play them.

This realisation calms me more than anything that is being said. I am not meant to win. Not tonight. It's a game, and it needs to be played first before anyone can win. That's fine. I can play. A familiar car pulls up and I smile in spite of myself. The playing field has been levelled. The red queen is moving into position.

"I already have a family," I comment simply. Deb turns her car off and steps out with her gun already raised.

"Get your asses back in that car," she orders the Vogels, "and fucking drive. I told you to keep the fuck away from us." She gestures at the car with the muzzle of her weapon. "Yes, it's loaded and yes, the safety is off. Now. Fuck. Off."

A strategist like me, my sister shifts to stand about three metres from me, putting herself between the opposition and the house, close enough to help me if I'm hit but far enough that we form a triangle with the Vogels in the crosshairs. We can come from both sides if we attack.

I feel my darkness, which was so focussed on the people before me, begin to retract. I feel it pull back and settle inside me. Deb does this. She brings me back.

"Debra," Evelyn says, starting her gentle voice on the newcomer. "I'm so glad you're here." The glint in her eye tells me otherwise; she does not like that my sister has arrived. "I've just been apologising to Dexter, for what transpired today. I wish very much that conversation had gone differently. I understand that, like your brother, you are probably very upset with me and are feeling quite betrayed. I never intended to make you feel this way. I am sorry you feel that I have lied to you."

"I don't _feel_ that you lied to me," Deb corrects, harshly. "You _did_ lie to me. Quite a difference."

"Can you blame me?" Vogel asks airily, smiling at us, obviously referencing our hostile reaction. "I only spoke to you about your father while you were in the clutches of deep depression, if you recall. I could not risk your mental health by sharing this truth prematurely." She smiles more widely. "You'd been through enough, after all, learning what your brother is, and what you did to protect him. The life you took."

"What an understanding sister," her son comments.

Deb's eyes flicker to Saxon. He is smirking. Whether he knew this about Deb before now, I can't tell, but his mother has given him power over us. Intentionally, I am certain. Knowledge is power, and I am furious that Vogel is playing this card over my sister.

"Get in that car," Deb snaps at him again, "or I'm placing you under arrest. There are a lot of people looking for you, _Oliver Saxon_."

He fakes an innocent look. "Me? What for?"

"Don't recall killing the sweet little thing that lived in my building?" I ask coolly.

"Oh." Saxon smiles and unfolds his arms. He begins to pick at one of his fingernails. "Cassie. Yes, she was sweet, wasn't she? I did like her. I'm offended you and your cop buddies are still looking into me over her death. Such a tragedy."

"Oh, seriously? Cut the crap," Deb says disgustedly. She flicks her hair off her face with a jerk of her head. "Put your hands where I can see them. Come quietly and I'll consider not shooting your ass."

"Arresting me without reading me my rights?" Saxon queries, ever innocently. "My, my, what will the judge say? And how will the rest of your team at Miami Metropolitan Police Station react to my well-documented, fully-evidenced story about a serial killer, his darling murderess sister and a lifetime of cover-ups?"

"Please," Deb snarls, smiling without real humour. She recognises the threat as fully as I do. We can't arrest him. We can't let him anywhere near the law. But she bluffs. "There's nothing you can say to them that they'll believe over my word. I used to be their boss. I'm squeaky-fucking-clean as they come. They love the shit out of me. And you... you're nobody. A murderer I'm going to nail to the wall."

Bright blue eyes shine with challenge. "Shall we test that theory?"

Vogel tries to placate the situation.

"Daniel, don't stir," she admonishes her son. "You are not helping."

"Sorry, Mother." But he is still smirking. He addresses me. "I think my mother is right. We are not that different. Our families don't need to be enemies. We can be allies. We're not the Montagues and Capulets; we don't need to fight our problems out, waiting for Romeo and Juliet to, you know..." He flicks his eyebrows upwards, suggestively, at Debra. "Not that it would be the worst solution."

Deb's mouth drops open, horrified. "Ugh, fuck. No. As if that would ever happen!" She lowers her gun momentarily, disbelieving. I adjust my footing to a more ready stance, in case we're attacked in this disarmed instant. I feel like spitting on Saxon. "I should shoot you right now, you slimy little fuck. In the... _you know_. Know what, I think I will."

She raises the gun to eye level and closes one eye to perfect her aim. Both Vogel and Saxon straighten slightly, apparently surprised by her actual resolve. Frightened for her son and his virility, Vogel steps forward with her hands raised. She did not expect this. She had planned to corner me, on my own, and talk me back into her hands. She did not count on my being backed up. She did not count on Deb.

"Please, Debra," she begs, clasping her hands together pleadingly. "Please listen. We don't want this. We don't want this bad blood between us."

"Bad blood?" Deb repeats. Her eyes slide over to me, and down to my hand. I wait until she is looking back up at our enemy before following her gaze. My knife is already bloodied. The wound on my hand has reopened and blood is running over my fingers, down the handle and along the blade. I hadn't even noticed. The doctor nods urgently.

"I didn't come here to make things worse," she insists. "I came to fix things. Daniel is not going to be a threat to either of you. He's going to stay with me, and we're going to work together to curb his urges, like Harry and I did for you, Dexter. Aren't we?" She turns to her son for confirmation. He nods, but I am not convinced. It is enough for Vogel, though. She looks back to Deb and I. "He wants to change. He wants to feel less empty."

"Good luck with that," I comment.

"You escaped me today," Saxon admits. "I was angry. But also jealous. You got mad with someone and were able to walk away without killing. I want to learn how to do that. You're a success story, Dexter. Your Code is stronger than the Need. I want that. My mother has promised to help me. But I could learn so much from you, too. I would never be a threat to you or your family again. I would be... content. We could both live our lives out the way we want."

Deb's expression conveys her opinion of this proposal, how twisted she considers it. I agree but do not let it show. I gather the implicit threat in that final sentence. _If_ I teach and train Saxon to be like me, he'll leave alone my people. And when I have taught him everything I know, what will be there to stop him hurting us?

This is why they are here. They are protecting themselves, cornering me with veiled threats against my family, and they want my skill and expertise. If I'll share. If I won't, then, out come the big guns.

In this moment I kind of wish Deb would just shoot them both. She is a good shot. They would either die instantly or bleed out in seconds. We could bolt inside, grab Hannah and Harrison, jump into her car and drive for an airport. Fly to Cuba. Disappear.

She'd hate me forever.

Deb would be exactly what she and I both don't want her to become: a serial killer, like me. And guilt-ridden. And empty. And in pain. And pissed with me, for ending her life in Miami so surely and for forcing her into an unhappy existence in another country where she has to put up with Hannah long-term.

"We need time," I say finally. Deb throws me a dark look. "I want to fix this, too, but it's too raw right now and I need time to come to terms with everything that's been said today. I know you understand."

Evelyn smiles shakily. Deb's gun is so steady. My knife is still raised protectively. Blood drips quietly to the wispy grass.

"I do understand," she agrees. "Take as long as you need. Both of you."

"I don't need any time," Deb says staunchly. "I've made up my mind." She pauses. We all wait, though I'm pretty sure already of what it will be. "Fuck you, that's what."

"Debra-"

Deb breaks form. She closes the gap between herself and the psychiatrist. Saxon and I tense, ready to defend our queens, but do not otherwise move. We eye each other. At the first sign of threat to my sister, I will launch myself at him and shred him. Likewise, if Deb shoots, or if I step in to assist her, Saxon will throw himself into the fray. He is closer. I see now that he is not unarmed. Something silvery slides into his hand from its hiding place in his sleeve. A bolt? No - a steel rod, a bar of reinforcement from concrete. He would have grabbed it from a worksite. It looks solid enough to do damage to my sister or to me if we're struck with it.

Deb presses her gun to Vogel's jaw, the same place I cut her earlier. The doctor tries to back away but when Deb drives the gun higher, she freezes, recognising the implication. We all wait for someone to make a move.

"My brother might forgive you one day, but I don't have to," Deb tells Evelyn. "After today, I never want to see you again. I don't want you at my house. I don't want you to call me. I don't want you dropping into the station as if you have some reason to be there. I want you out of my life. You hear? You killed my father. Maybe he was a shit one, but he was _my_ one, and the only one I had."

She twists the gun in her hand, contemplating. In her eyes I see the shadows. Her darkness isn't like mine, but it's just as real. She's considering this. I want to run to her, rip the gun from her hands, force her to look me in the eyes and yell at her not to listen to that dark little voice. I don't want to see her give in. I don't want to watch her fall any deeper. I want her to stay the same – the strong one, the good one. But Saxon is watching me closely, ready to pounce on my sister at the first twitch of my muscles. He can break her arm easily enough with a strong strike with that bar. Or knock her unconscious with a whack to the head. Or choke her out by hooking it under her chin and yanking back. Or all of those, if he's quick. I've never seen him in action. I cannot move.

"Deb," I call, very softly, trying not to startle anyone. "Deb, come on."

"Just tell me," Deb murmurs to the doctor, "one thing. Did it hurt you to kill my dad?"

Vogel swallows. I'm fearful. I don't know what answer Deb wants or expects.

"I-I wished it was avoidable," the older woman stammers out. The manipulative queen is weakened by this surprise uprising of her former subjects. "I didn't enjoy it. I kept hoping he would change his mind. But he was stubborn, like you. I didn't know what else to do. I was trying to protect my own – I was trying to protect Dexter."

For a moment I feel like I'm on the other side of a glass wall. An outsider looking in. Over Vogel's shoulder, Deb and Saxon share a loaded look. Both are confronted by the notion of me being his mother's _own_. They don't like it at all. Their possessive natures reject the thought of their person belonging to someone else, too. I am amazed. Other people feel this, too. Not just me. I'm not so strange after all. Well – perhaps comparing my emotional responses to those of other serial killers and my incredibly damaged sister is not the most valid form of measurement – but I am sure it is a start.

"Dexter isn't _your own_ ," Deb says eventually. "And he doesn't need you to protect him. He has me." She slowly backs away, back to me. I feel relief with every step. Stronger, more in control, better, the closer she gets. "You didn't answer my question, but I suppose that's answer enough. I'm done. You can go." She reaches my side, so close I could put an arm around her if I wanted. I stay ready to defend myself and her if I need to.

"So kind of you to let us live," Saxon says snidely, reaching for his mother's arm and pulling her back as well. He pushes her into the passenger seat and goes around the car. Evelyn winds down her window.

"We will be in touch, won't we, Dexter?" she asks, hopefully. Saxon glares at us as he climbs into the driver's seat. "You will call?"

"I'll call you when I'm ready to talk," I agree, though firmly. I lower my knife, finally, and Deb lowers her gun as the car screeches away. We stand there for a full ten seconds, letting the heat of the moment cool. The adrenaline settles. The reality sets in. She flicks the safety back on. She hands me the gun.

"Fuck," she comments, eyes haunted, "I need that motherfucking burger."

The sun disappears and I'm standing in her front yard with a bloodied kitchen knife and a police-issue pistol.

"Deb," I say, but then don't know how to finish. I love you? I'm proud of you? How could you run off without me, after we agreed you'd go nowhere alone? I'm so amazingly glad you're back? I can hardly believe how well you handled that? I can't work out how to say all of this, so I don't. She knows, surely.

"I wanted to shoot her, Dexter," she exhales, running hands through her hair and closing her eyes. "I think I nearly did. Who the fuck am I?"

I feel useless as she suppresses a sob and presses her hands against the sides of her head. I didn't even do anything this time, yet because of the nightmares I've brought into her life she's cracking again. I drop the knife and gun and cover her hands with mine, bringing my face close to hers so I can see into her eyes when she opens them. They are so full – the colour of mine, yet overflowing with feelings and ethics and beliefs that I will never be able to fully embrace.

"You are you," I tell her. "You are my sister." She inhales shakily, her body struggling with the aftermath of the adrenaline rush, the effects of strong emotional responses and physical exhaustion. While I slept like a baby last night, I don't think she slept at all. "You didn't shoot. You could have and didn't. You did right, Deb. You did alright."

She sucks in another uneven breath. "You don't understand. I didn't care about right or wrong. I didn't even care about getting caught. I only didn't kill her because you told me I wasn't allowed."

I press my fingers between hers.

"That's not so bad," I say. "I only didn't kill Vogel today because _you_ told me I wasn't allowed."

She takes deep, slow breaths until she has them under control. Beneath my hands, hers tremble for maybe a minute but then go still. She is strong. I feel a tickling sensation on my forearm and glance at it. A line of red is running down from my hand towards my elbow. I become aware of wetness between my hand and Deb's, and wonder how annoyed she will be that I am bleeding on her hair. She looks, too. She doesn't throw me off and yell at me that she's only just washed and straightened her hair this afternoon. I know it takes her a long time so I expect this. She looks back at me.

"So I'm no worse than you?" she asks sardonically.

"You never could be." I stroke her hair with my thumb.

"You were right, Dex. I'm not cut out for this. Look at me," she says, with a short, bitter laugh. "I'm a fucking mess. I should leave this shit to you. I should keep clear."

She should, but where would that leave me? "You don't need to worry about anything. I'm going to take care of Vogel and Saxon. They'll be dead by the time you come back from Astor and Cody's. You'll come back to work and you and Quinn and Batista will wrap it up in days. You'll see. You'll have three closed cases on Angel's desk by the end of the month."

"And you'll be... in Cuba?" Her voice is barely a breath. I shake my head.

"No. I'll be here. With you."

She looks into my eyes uncertainly, and I'm sure she's looking for lies. She won't find any. This is the plan. Get Hannah out, wait for things to settle, go visit. It works best for everyone. It means I can stay here with my sister, while she needs me, and slowly reorganise my life to give me more time with Hannah. Because that's what I want. I think. This close to Deb, breathing her in, drinking her strength to bolster my own, losing myself in her eyes, I can't even picture Hannah. I can't think of why I might want to leave town with her. I can only feel content. Deb came back.

When she can't find any dishonesty, Deb chances a small, lopsided smile. I smile back at her, realising this might be the first time she's properly smiled at me since I told her I was thinking of leaving. I love it. It's real.

At the movement of my mouth, Deb's eyes flick involuntarily downward. She tries to pull her gaze back to mine but her attention is drawn back almost immediately to my lips. It stays there for too long. Her breaths deepen. Her smile slips away. When she manages to meet my eyes again, I see fear in hers.

I know what she's afraid of. I'm afraid of her doing it, too. She's only inches away – one split-second bad decision and she could kiss me. I still don't know whether I think her insane feelings are real or imagined but that won't matter if she acts on them. The potential damage to our relationship is real. The awkwardness would be real. The heartbreak would be real. It has never occurred to me that we might _both_ pursue it, but if we did, the fallout for everyone else around us would also be very real.

I am the older sibling. I should be the responsible one. I know that this is the right moment to let go of her hands, apologise for bleeding in her hair and step away. But for some reason I do not. I stay completely still, objectively noting the apprehension that builds between us. I am hyperaware of her closeness and how close we are standing to the edge of our relationship. Deb begins to shake again, paralysed by indecision. I was wrong earlier – she _does_ know what she wants; she just doesn't know if she really wants it. If that makes sense. I am playing with fire. I am exhausted from our constant fighting, too tired to worry too much about getting burned. But that is exactly what might happen. It is in emotional turmoil that Deb makes her biggest relationship choices, and this would be a horrendous one. I hate myself for not making it for her, and think again about moving away. Still, I don't.

The tension builds to snapping point and Deb wrenches away from me, stumbling back a step. She breathes heavily and stares at me with frightened eyes. I wonder what she saw in _my_ eyes that has scared her so badly.

I don't know what to say. Anything said will only, I expect, make this moment worse. And it can't get much more awkward than it already is. We both square our shoulders and seem to make the simultaneous decision to pretend nothing has happened.

"My burger's probably gone cold," she mutters, going to her car and grabbing two bags, one plastic and one paper, from the floor. I collect the weapons off the lawn and wipe down the knife before approaching her, keeping a brotherly distance. She thrusts the paper bag at me and I feel its warmth. Burgers. She reaches back in for her drink, a soft drink in the usual paper cup with the flimsy plastic lid and colourful straw. Deb locks the car and we start inside. What a picture-perfect family we are – adult brother and sister, me covered in bruises, her pale, waltzing into the house with groceries, a bag of McDonalds, a sticky red knife and a gun after almost kissing in the street.

Hannah has locked the door so Deb unlocks it and lets us in. She nudges it open with her hip.

"Auntie Deb!" Harrison exclaims, sitting up in his chair and grinning at her. My sister grins back at him, horrible, hurtful and unsettling episodes of the day and the past five minutes pushed to the back of her mind.

"My man, you're awake," she says. She empties the plastic bag onto the bench beside him. He watches her activity with interest; Hannah's sushi-making is forgotten. My girlfriend is rolling strips of chicken into the rice by now. She catches my eye as I unload Deb's gun. I throw her a quick, reassuring smile and head into my sister's room. I leave the gun and its ammunition in the drawer by the bed and dump the knife into her bathroom sink. I clean up my hand, again, and steal some sterile padding and a bandage from the bathroom drawer. I quickly redress the cut. I return to the kitchen with the McDonalds bag.

"Is everything alright?" Hannah asks nonchalantly. She is very worried, but trying to stay calm for Harrison. Deb is stacking her few groceries into the refrigerator.

"Everything's fine," she answers brusquely. She leans back to show us a plastic tub with a foil lid; some kind of chocolate mousse. "FYI, this is _mine_. Don't let me catch any of you eating it." She puts it right at the back of the fridge. "I'm allowed to eat it in fourteen days if I work out every single day and eat clean."

"Today not inclusive," I guess, and I get a half-amused look in return. I place the paper bag on the counter. Harrison eyes it. I address Hannah. "It sounds like they want some kind of truce. The Vogels are going to keep clear of us if we promise not to kill them and if I help Evelyn train Saxon to be like me."

"Which is all total bull," Deb elaborates, dragging another chair over to sit beside Harrison. She reaches into the bag and withdraws two fries. She hands one automatically to him. He devours it. "They don't want peace with you, Dex. Saxon enjoys what he does. He doesn't want to be like you. He wants you to let your guard down." She takes a sip of her Coke and offers the drink to her nephew. I make the assumption that she hasn't managed to source that rum yet to mix in, and that she is not giving my son alcohol. He takes it eagerly.

"I really don't think Saxon and Vogel are on the same page," I agree. "I think they want different things, and are using each other to get it from us. Evelyn wants a son she can keep, and he wants a piece of my brain for his jars."

"So what do we do about it?" Hannah asks. I can see that she is thinking about our plans, and how they may need to change.

"We be extremely cautious," I answer. "It's like a standoff. They know too much about us for Deb to arrest them; we know too much about them for Saxon to target one of us and not expect the rest to retaliate."

"It sounds... unfavourable."

"We continue as planned. I'll pretend to forgive them, after a few days, and once Deb and Harrison are in Orlando I'll do exactly what we talked about."

"Orlando?" Harrison pipes up, thankfully only taking in the one part of the conversation actually appropriate for his ears.

"Yep." Deb takes back her drink for a mouthful. "You and I are going on a trip to Orlando for Astor's birthday. It's a mask party. I'm working the next couple of days, but on the weekend I have a few hours to go shopping, and I'm going to get you," she leans close, and he leans in excitedly, "a _Spiderman_ mask." Harrison's eyes light up at the prospect. "And you need to choose Astor a present, of course, so we'll do that, too."

Deb reaches into the paper bag and brings the fries out. She arranges the box on the benchtop between herself and her nephew. They both dig in. Hannah frowns.

"Harrison, don't eat too much," she chides. "You won't have room for your sushi."

Midway to his mouth with a clutch of golden fries, Harrison's hand freezes. He looks between the three present adults guiltily and uncertainly. He is young but he recognises that there is a choice to be made here, a choice between people rather than just between foods.

"McDonalds isn't very good for you, anyway," Hannah adds, continuing with her preparation. Harrison nods reluctantly, having heard this before from Jamie. He looks sadly at the pile of shoestring fries. Deb pops another one into her mouth.

"I eat McDonalds," she says. "I turned out alright. Besides," Deb continues, sliding the fries closer to Harrison, "there's no reason you can't eat some of these _and_ the sushi, and then choose the best one. Plus, I like sharing with you."

Harrison smiles brightly at her. He shoves those fries into his mouth and chews. Hannah glares at Deb. I can see that her night is ruined. She was loving it, cooking with a little boy she might one day think of as her own. She loved having him all to herself, for three quarters of an hour. But though I sympathise, I wonder at her disappointment. A cooking lesson coupled with a chat about kindergarten, along with a few dinners and playdates six months ago, though pleasant, do not equate to four years of adoration. Obviously Harrison's loyalty would be with Deb.

He looks back at me, salt on his lips. "What are you having for dinner, Daddy?"

Hannah puts her knife down and looks at me expectantly with raised eyebrows. Deb digs through her paper bag and offers me a circular, wrapped package. I am torn, recognising that I am in the same awkward place these women just had Harrison in. The same awkward place I've found myself a dozen times in the past few weeks, and especially the past twenty-seven hours.

I look into two pairs of eyes, one blue and one hazel, like mine.

"Daddy asked Aunt Deb to get him a cheeseburger," I say finally, accepting it from my sister and accepting the furious look I receive from Hannah. I deserve it, I'm sure. But it seems I can only make one person happy at any one time, and I've found that Hannah is much easier to bring around later if I piss her off. And I can't take another fight with Deb, not today.

That night, after dinner and after finally getting Harrison down to sleep – a task made more difficult by Deb's Coke – we stand together in the living room, the three of us, and flesh out our plan in hushed voices. Deb is mostly quiet. Hannah asks a lot of questions about particulars. I do most of the talking. At the end we agree that the most important thing is to stay alive long enough to carry out this plan, and I decide to sleep on the couch, in view of the sliding glass doors and the main door, until Deb and Harrison are in Orlando. Hannah doesn't fight me on this, but I see through her angry eyes that she is annoyed I won't be sleeping in the same bed as her. I wonder briefly whether she wants me with her at night because she wants to be close with me or because it will upset my sister. Then I feel guilty for thinking this. Hannah is my girlfriend. I love her. I shouldn't go looking for problems with her. And she doesn't know about Deb's mistaken feelings. I promise myself she never will. It wouldn't be fair to anyone.

Deb finally agrees that my plan can work and that she'll be a part of it and we part. Hannah deliberately hangs back to kiss me and say goodnight, and even seems to be preparing to settle onto the couch with me, but I am insistent that she cannot sleep here with me. If the house is compromised, I do not want her in harm's way. She reluctantly heads off to bed. I check all the doors and windows again and lay on the couch to sleep.

I must fall straight to sleep. I slept deeply the night before, with Deb, but the day's events have worn me out. I dream.

I see my father, in good lights and bad, and I see my wife in a bathtub of blood. I see Oliver Saxon and Arthur Mitchell looking down at her with looks of triumph, blood dripping from their hands. Then Rita is gone, and the bathtub is still there. Naked, Hannah steps into it and begins to bathe in the red water. When she leans back, the tips of her blonde hair are stained with Rita's blood. Harry walks in, and Hannah offers him a glass of wine. He sits on the tub's edge and drinks. He immediately chokes and falls backwards into the water with a splash. The tub takes him whole and he disappears below the water. Hannah stands and looks down, red running down her gorgeous body. I run closer and look into the water. Harry is not there, but someone is there, lying on the bottom of the bath. Long dark hair obscures Deb's face and I fear the worst. I reach in for her but she is deep, much deeper than I expected. I climb in and sink immediately. The bath of blood is not a bath at all, but an ocean of it. I dive and swim as fast as I can.

My progress is painfully slow. When I reach her I find her wrapped in plastic with a red slit along her cheek. Eyes closed. I tear at the plastic and it comes away. Her hand, floating uselessly in the water, brushes against mine. Encased in her fingers I find a glass blood slide. I take it from her and examine it. There is no single drop of blood. The blood has been traced into letters across the surface of the glass.

 _'Too late'_.

I force myself out of the nightmare and open my eyes to stare at Debra's living room ceiling. Many hours have passed. My breaths are quick and short, like I've been jogging, and work to get it under control. Control is what I do.

I am unsettled by the dream but remind myself that I have had a ridiculous day of upsets, and my brain is trying to work through everything. The dream makes sense, in this context. I take a slow, deep breath and close my eyes.

It is now that I notice a nearby sound, another rhythmic, soft pattern. I turn my head and, in the dark, make out a long shape on the floor. As I focus my eyes, I note the steady rise and fall of the central section of the form. Alive.

I am not the only one having nightmares. I smile at the ceiling. I am not alone. Harry did a lot wrong but he did this one thing for me that I will both be ever grateful for and ever regretful of.

I don't know what will become of us all. I don't know if my plan can work or if I can save myself or my family from the Vogels. I don't even know if we'll wake up tomorrow of if Saxon will get us in our sleep. I just know, as I drift back to sleep, that I have her, and that is enough.

 


	8. Chapter 8

The following few days are relatively bland, compared with that emotionally charged one. They roll into each other, difficult to differentiate. Each morning I wake on the couch to find nothing awful has happened overnight. I eat the breakfast prepared for me by Hannah. Deb and I drop Harrison off at kindergarten and then drive to work together. We work side-by-side without giving anyone any clue that we are dealing with life-shattering issues and planning a double murder to cover up the international escape of a wanted fugitive that we're meant to be looking for. After work we drive to my apartment and hang out, drinking beer and eating steak and acting like everything is normal as Jamie packs her books away and leaves for the night. We retrieve my car at some point, although I forget which day this was. Then we head back to Debra's and put Harrison to bed, watch some T.V. and then go to bed ourselves. Hannah sleeps in the spare room on a fold-out couch, enjoying sharing a space with my son. Deb starts off each night in her own bed but, after I've fallen asleep, I drift to consciousness to find her curled up on the mat on the floor.

I recall that she used to do this as a little girl. Always a light sleeper, I would wake to hear her crying in the next room after a nightmare, and then, sneaking, thinking I didn't know, she would creep into my room and go to sleep on my floor. I never said anything. She would always be gone by the time I woke the next morning.

At first, I didn't know how to feel about it. I was probably six or seven and I knew that this was _my_ room and _my_ space and that little sisters were universally annoying and I should want her out. But I didn't. I found almost immediately that I actually slept better when she was there. I suppose that was an early discovery of the curing properties of my dear sister, back when I used her innocently. Before I started to take more than she could give.

She would do this a couple of nights in a row every few months, maybe, for years, on and off. I don't remember exactly when she stopped, but I remember that she eventually grew out of the nightmares and didn't need me anymore. For many years. Then our dad died. That night, I didn't sleep for even a second, although she doesn't know that. I lay awake listening to her cry in her room for hours, until, exhausted, she slipped into my room and curled herself into a tight, trembling ball of silent sobs on the carpet right beside my bed and eventually cried herself to sleep. I'm sure she thinks I was asleep. I normally would have been, but that night was the one night that even Deb's steady breathing was not enough to give me peace.

I have wondered, since, whether I should have done differently that night. It didn't occur to me at the time – like hers, my world had been turned upside down – but maybe I should have climbed out of bed and lain down next to her. I'm not sure it would have made any difference but maybe it would have been the right thing to do. I don't know.

Like back then, I now say nothing about Deb's sleeping patterns. I pretend like I've slept through her every visit, although really, I've never _not_ woken to her. I enjoy the make-believe. I enjoy being her brother, being useful to her.

And I still sleep so much more deeply when she's near. The nearer the better. Probably this isn't a good thing while I'm meant to be guarding her and my family. On the second night, I consider acknowledging her as she opens her bedroom door, telling her to go away. Her presence in the living room is undermining the point of my being here. But I keep breathing slowly, keep my eyes closed, keep up the illusion that I am fast asleep until she falls asleep, too, and then I drift off into deep, dreamless darkness. I can't send her away. We are saving each other from our nightmares. If real ones come knocking, we will deal with that when we wake.

Harrison is my latest victim, I realise on one of these days. Like I have done to my sister, I am now twisting my beautiful son into acting outside the parameters of his ethical system to suit my purpose. I am hit with guilt over this when I sit down with him to explain that he must not tell anyone about Hannah's presence in Deb's house.

"What about Jamie?" he asks immediately, because Jamie is the goddess that makes the world go around. I try not to cringe. Jamie is the very _worst_ person he could tell. Her brother is Lieutenant Angel Batista, and her boyfriend is Joey Quinn. Worse, she'll actually listen to Harrison's ramblings, recognise the name Hannah and make the connection that others might miss.

"No, it's very important we don't tell Jamie about Hannah," I say. I feel awful, worse when Harrison frowns. "Remember, Jamie was very confused about Hannah and thought Hannah needs to go to jail? So we can't tell her yet, until Daddy can think of a way to make her believe us."

"Oh," Harrison says, as though suddenly understanding something. "That's easy. We can just _tell_ Jamie. She is very smart, you know. She remembers lots of things that I tell her. We can just tell her, Hannah's nice, and she'll believe us."

"But she might think we're tricking," I counter, "and then she might tell Joey or Uncle Angel to put Hannah in jail. So," I say, adjusting the stolen hat that my son has taken a liking to on his golden hair, "it's better if we keep it a secret that Hannah's here. Even from Jamie."

"So... lie to Jamie?"

I smile at Harrison and place a hand on his shoulder. He is only four but he is already a better man that I will ever be. I am sure of this when I use what he loves against him to get my way, unable to see another way out.

"The other police will be really mad with Aunt Deb if they find out that she didn't tell anyone about Hannah," I explain. "She is looking after Hannah because your Aunt Deb is so nice, but the other police don't understand and if Jamie tells them, Aunt Deb could get into trouble."

I ruin my son's day. He goes off to kindy miserable, hugging Debra for an excessively long time at the school gate. She is mystified by his behaviour and even walks him to the door and hand-delivers him to his teacher, where he proceeds to throw a huge tantrum and literally kick, scream and cry as Deb apologises profusely to the poor teacher and leaves him there.

"When did your son become another of your tools, Dexter?"

I turn in my seat to glare at my father's ghost, sitting relaxedly in the back seat of my car beside Harrison's booster.

"Fat lot of use you've been lately," I say scathingly, to avoid the question. I avoid many things. I am avoiding awkward questions right now, by sitting in the car rather than face the teachers and fence off questions about my yellowing bruises. I look a right mess. "Where have you been? Did you not notice the horrendous day I had with Deb on Tuesday after you left me?"

"I noticed. You just didn't need me." Harry turns his head to eye me calmly. "You've almost worn her out, Dexter. Is Harrison the newer, sharper knife? Is Debra getting blunt?"

"She was always blunt," I mutter, turning back to the front to watch Deb stride quickly from the kindergarten building. She casts anxious, guilt-ridden looks backwards. Probably she can still hear Harrison screaming for her. "And what do you mean, I didn't need you? I pretty royally fucked up that day – I probably could have used a sensible word."

"You probably could," Harry agrees, "but I suppose that means you still haven't worked me out." He catches my eye in the rear view mirror. "Why haven't you called Vogel yet?"

"I'm calling her Friday night to say I've been thinking about it," I say. "I'll glean some more out of her. Find out her schedule for the next few days. Let her think I'm coming around, like I miss her. Depending on how that conversation goes, I'll probably confirm our renewed friendship status on Monday or something. That's about as long as I think I can stretch it. After that, it'll be a waiting game before Deb and Harrison leave for Orlando, and then it'll be game-on. I'll set a date to meet face-to-face and start organising my kill."

"So you're really going to do this? Kill Vogel – who doesn't fit the Code, as far as you've bothered to investigate – take on Saxon, who knows more about you than you know about him, and set up a murder-suicide situation, spill a bottle of Hannah's blood in the study and on a few torture tools... put Debra on the case... hope it all works... all to rescue this woman who once tried to kill your sister?"

"It's not all for Hannah," I argue. "It's for all of us. You heard Deb – she wants Vogel dead. If I don't do it, she will, and I can't let that happen. Dr Vogel killed _you_. You of all people should be somewhat sympathetic in this instance." I give my father an irritable look for his lack of support.

"I told you," he answers, "I didn't want this life for you. Not once I saw the reality of it. It scared me. It isn't right. I certainly don't want to see you kill an old woman for a mistake made nearly two decades ago."

"I'm going to kill her, no matter what you say. I tried that line of thought," I remind him when he tries to push his case, "and it ended with Deb waving a gun around in a cemetery. She nearly shot Vogel that same night. Vogel needs to go. Saxon is a threat to everyone I care about, so he needs to be taken out, too. And Hannah..."

"Was a liability from the start."

"Will be less of a liability once out of the country," I correct. "This is going to work. You'll see. I've got this."

"Just remember," Harry warns me, as Deb nears, "Saxon is hunting you as surely as you're hunting him. When you arrange a kill date with Vogel, remember that you might not be the only one with a plan."

The door opens and Deb drops into the car, looking guilty.

"I don't know what his problem was," she admits, clicking her seatbelt on. I am driving us today, and turn the key. "He just lost it with me. Wouldn't go to his poor fucking teacher. I feel like a mega bitch walking off."

I pretend not to know what is wrong with Harrison. I drive us onto the highway and head for Miami Metro. We fall into a companionable silence. Things have settled between us, for now. Unlike that awful Monday afternoon where I broke her heart and she broke my face, or that very long, painful Tuesday, we are fine at the moment. Well. 'Fine' being a relative term. We are not fighting. There has been no further screaming, hair-pulling, hitting, crying or drawing of weapons. That said, we are both making a concerted effort, now that we have caught up on some much-needed sleep, to be less hostile towards each other. The fighting has taken a huge toll on us both, as have the many cycles of demented love and abuse we started and ended over that day. Without the stressors of being chased by Saxon, finding out my creator killed my mentor, feeling pressure from Hannah to make plans and break them to Deb and trying to throw off Clayton and Elway, I am a less destructive element of my sister's life. When I am balanced, I exist beside her quite innocently. There is give as well as take. When I am unbalanced... that is when I consume her.

We are civil, even friendly at work. I try to keep her in view. We take lunch at the same time. We join the same conversations. When Deb is called out to a crime scene and Angel instructs me to stay behind – my recovering appearance doesn't sell a professional image for the department at the moment – I fly through my lab reports but check my phone every two minutes, worried about her. I tell myself that Angel and Quinn will look after her. Saxon won't make a move on my sister while she's with a team of detectives. When they return after three hours, I am utterly relieved. I leave my lab to join the discussion at Deb's desk over what was found at the scene. I note that Quinn is stone-faced and quiet. Deb tries to lighten the mood by making a joke at my expense, and even Quinn cracks a smile while the rest of us double over laughing.

Angel stops into my lab and comments in wonderment on my strange relationship with my sibling. He says that his sister never forgives him as quickly as Deb and I have been known to recover from spats. That said, he and Jamie probably never get into fights as huge as ours. Neither of the Batista siblings is a psychopath, nor is one a walking bundle of volatility.

I try to book the same days off that Deb already has. Angel isn't worried about the late notice, but I can only take from the Saturday to the Wednesday, not Wednesday-to-Wednesday because of Masuka's days off. This is fine. It still suits me.

No one suspects anything is amiss with the Morgans. Even _we_ could almost be convinced that nothing is amiss with us. We don't mention the moment on her front lawn, and although I think about it a few times, and I'm sure she thinks on it even more, it doesn't appear to have an impact on our interactions. I consider being concerned – Deb told me more than half a year ago that she thinks she's in love with me, yet despite numerous moments of closeness or tension she has never come that close to acting on it before. What does that mean? Is something escalating? Is she just unravelling? Is it something _I_ am doing wrong? Again, I am sure that talking about it will only make things worse, so I keep quiet and hope it goes away. I don't want change.

I bring Deb with me to collect Harrison from Jamie. I buy doughnuts on the way and open the box on the counter of my apartment. Harrison is playing in the living room alone. I hope Jamie isn't in another room calling the Marshal Service to report that Harrison has mentioned Hannah.

"Hi," I greet my son's nanny when she appears. "You pick the first one."

"No, thanks, Dexter," Jamie turns me down, forcing a smile. Her eyes are rimmed with red and she avoids looking at Deb. She grabs some of her books from my desk. She doesn't seem angry or confused, so I gather this isn't related to Hannah. "I'm not really hungry. But thank you." She goes to the door and pauses. "Uh, do you need me this weekend?"

Deb has taken a bite of a doughnut and makes a negative sound through her mouthful, waving her hand no. She chews quickly and swallows. "No, I have Saturday off and Dex has Sunday, so between us we can look after him. And then I'm taking him with me from Wednesday for a week, remember?"

Jamie nods, trying to act normal, but I can see that everything is not normal with her. I don't expect that she wants to discuss it so I play along.

"A weekend off. Big plans?" I ask.

"I'm thinking of taking a quick trip," she admits. "I got a job offer. I wasn't going to consider it, because it's so far away, but it's a really great opportunity so I'm thinking of popping over and having a look around. See if it's somewhere I might like to be." She looks suddenly horrified. "Not that I don't want to be here, looking after Harrison. I really love this job."

*  
"Yeah, but you've studied so long and so hard," I say. "This is your dream. I've always known that you couldn't do this forever. We love you – really – and I don't know how I'll manage without you, but we'll find a way. I'm really happy for you. We all are."

Deb nods. She and Jamie have had their problems in the past but both make the effort these days to make it work. Their lives and relationships cross over in so many ways that it is just constantly awkward if they don't get along. She smiles.

"Harrison will miss you so much and Dex and I will probably struggle for a while with the new routine, and to find someone to replace you," she says, and I smile, too, remembering the very carefully screened recruitment process she undertook when we first tried to find a nanny. She scared a lot of them away. "You're pretty nearly irreplaceable. But we're happy if you're happy, and if this is the dream, then get out there and fucking chase it."

Harrison doesn't even notice the swearing. He knows it's not a word he's allowed to use but he also seems to accept that Aunt Deb doesn't have to comply with this rule. He munches on his doughnut. Jamie is silent for a beat too long, looking at Deb as though searching for falseness or sarcasm. She doesn't find it; it isn't there. She allows a small smile in return.

"Thank you, both of you," she says finally. She opens the door. "I'll let you know next week what I think of this place. It might be a hole. It won't be until next semester that I start, even if I do like it."

"Don't think of Harrison or I while you're there," I warn. "Don't compare it with Miami. Don't worry about anyone else or what anyone else expects you to do. Just think about you, and what _you_ want. You deserve it."

That seems to be exactly what Jamie needs to hear, and her smile evolves into a real one. She shifts her books to rest against her hip and says goodbye. Harrison runs to her and hugs her tightly, but unlike this morning with Deb he lets her go and returns to the kitchen.

I let my sister and son eat their doughnut in silence while I think on Jamie's impending departure from Miami. I already knew she's graduated. I knew she'll be moving on to bigger things shortly. This could prove difficult to work around. With Hannah in Cuba as of next fortnight, there will be no one but Deb and me – full-time workers – to look after my son. I'll need a new nanny.

When I mention this to Hannah the same night, her eyes brighten with hope.

"Dexter," she whispers, so that Deb, making herself a sandwich in the kitchen behind us, doesn't overhear. "This is a sign. Just come with me. We can all leave together; you, me, and Harrison. It can be perfect. You can get the same job you're doing now, except in Argentina – I mean, Cuba – and I'll stay at home and look after Harrison."

I cut her down quickly and remind her that this doesn't work for me at all, and as I lay on the sofa late that night, staring at the ceiling, I realise that this is the third time she has suggested nearly the same plan. Despite the reasons I have presented to make the original runaway plan invalid, she keeps bringing it up and trying to sell it to me. She always quickly comes around and agrees again to the _real_ plan, in which she smuggles herself out of the States alone and I join her later, but I wonder why she keeps drifting back to old ideas. Then I hear Deb's bedroom door crack open and I close my eyes and maintain a rhythmic breathing pattern to let her believe I'm asleep, and soon we both are.

Harrison barely speaks to me. I get out of work early on Friday and take Deb with me to pick Harrison up from kindy so Jamie can spend the afternoon packing for her quick trip. My son staunchly ignores me as I stand at the classroom door waiting for the finish bell. Afterwards, when all the other children have filtered out with their parents, Harrison goes to my sister and makes a show of taking her hand instead of mine, and the teacher comes over to tell me that Harrison's behaviour has been quite off for the past couple of days. She asks whether anything has changed at home, because that usually precedes behavioural changes. She obviously notes the injuries to my face. Deb watches me coolly as I pretend to think about it. What has happened with Harrison in the past few days? He has seen beloved adults fighting. He has heard yelling, screaming and hurling of insults. He has had a new person introduced to his family life. He has been asked to lie to someone he loves, for someone he loves, by someone else he loves.

"My sister is taking Harrison to Orlando on Wednesday, for a week," I tell the teacher eventually. "Maybe he's thinking on that a lot? Oh, and we've been staying at her house for the past few nights. The carpet needed to come up at my place and it's a mess."

The teacher nods, unconvinced. She shows me Harrison's workbook and what he drew and 'wrote' today. The drawing depicts a little boy sitting beside a grey rectangle and a pair of adults standing on the opposite side of the page. His developing writing is what the teacher called 'roleplay writing' at our last interview – indiscriminate strings of letters arranged into word-like clusters, made up mostly of letters he recognises from his own name and other familiar names. I see a lot of H's and D's. The teacher has written beneath it in her super-neat print.

_My aunty and daddy went with me to see my mummy's stone. The flowers are white. My mummy is dead. Sometimes my daddy and aunty are mad at each other. I don't want my aunty to be dead too._

I swallow and look up at the teacher's waiting gaze. I don't know what four-year-olds usually write in their scrapbooks, but I suppose stories about visiting graves, fighting guardians and worrying about their aunts dying is not typical. Deb takes the book and reads.

"Dexter got hurt at work," she lies finally, handing the scrapbook back to the teacher, whose eyes widen as Deb goes on. "It was an unexpected situation and the perpetrator was still on-scene. Dex didn't follow protocols and tried to defend me. He got injured. That must be what Harrison's been worrying about." Deb leans down and scoops up Harrison. He snuggles into her neck. "It's caused some tension because we've been reprimanded at work but we didn't realise it was affecting the little guy."

"That coupled with the visit to the cemetery and living away from his home at the moment must be really confusing for him," I agree, jumping on the bandwagon. The teacher nods, surprised by Deb's story. She takes it as truth but doesn't seem to like it. She closes the scrapbook, looking less than impressed. I add, "We'll talk to him," and reach out to stroke Harrison's cheek. He turns his head away from me.

"That's a good idea," the teacher says. She smiles tightly at Debra. "Perhaps reconsider how much information to give him when you do. He seems to be having trouble processing it all."

Deb gives me an annoyed look and we leave.

"Try to save your ass and that's what I get? Too much information, Aunt Deb? What did she want me to say?" She sighs, frustrated, and buckles Harrison into his booster seat. He stares back at her with sad eyes. She finishes with his belt and looks back at him. I stand back, hoping she can fix this. She fixes everything else for me. "Harrison, I read what you wrote down. Your daddy and I do sometimes get angry with each other, but it's only a little bit. He's my big brother, just like Cody is _your_ big brother, so even when we make each other angry, we still love each other. And you. We love you most of all. We're sorry for making you sad." She perches on the edge of the backseat and finds Harrison's oversized stolen fedora on the floor. She dusts it off and positions it on his head. "And you don't need to worry about me. I'm not going to die. I'm pretty tough. Plus Daddy looks after me, and so do Uncle Angel, and Joey, and a bunch of other policemen."

Harrison was starting to look calmer but now frowns worriedly.

"Daddy told me..." he begins, then trails off. Deb and I wait patiently for him to decide to continue. He looks past his aunt to give me an accusatory look. "He told me you might get into trouble with the other police. If I tell anyone about Hannah. I don't want you to go to jail or get dead."

In the silence that follows I am given a very nasty, told-you-so look from my sister. She did try to tell me. She told me I needed to think about how to explain Hannah to Harrison. I thought it was simple – make him believe she's alright. It's not simple at all, as it turns out that Deb had probably already considered. Harrison is a real person now, with beliefs and relationships and a presence in the real world beyond just being the baby I carry around with me. I did not properly consider how to make my son both like Hannah _and_ appreciate the need to keep her existence a secret without compromising him.

"I'm not going to jail, or getting dead," Deb promises her nephew. "Hannah is going away soon, and then we won't need to keep it a secret anymore. We can just forget about it."

"But what if someone finds out?" Harrison's voice is small. "What if I make a mistake and accidentally tell someone?"

"When we go to Orlando, we're going to have so much fun that you'll forget completely about Hannah," Deb promises. "You won't talk about her because you won't even be thinking about her. You'll just be playing all day with me, Astor and Cody." She leans close to kiss Harrison's face. "I'm not scared, Harrison. I know you won't tell anyone because you're too clever. And when Hannah goes away, we won't have to worry, because there won't be any chance of getting in trouble anymore."

My son hugs her neck again. When she steps away from the car, he is smiling. Saved.

"When is Hannah leaving?" he asks us brightly. My heart sinks. Now he's eager to be rid of my girlfriend. I can see this trajectory causing me grief later, with Hannah. Deb beams back at him, delighted with this outcome and not worried about causing me relationship issues.

"She's going away while we're at Astor and Cody's," she coos, "so you and I will come back and she'll be all gone."

Content, Harrison sits back in his seat. I step forward to shut the door but he suddenly sits up and addresses me.

"Daddy!" he exclaims, and I lean inside to listen. He speaks in a whisper. "Do you really look after Aunt Deb?"

I force a sad smile. Truthfully, no, not really. I trash her whole life at every available opportunity, let her rebuild and then tear it all apart again. But do I kill people who pose a threat to her? Yes, usually. Have I saved her life before? Yes, several times. Do I make decisions in her best interests? Hmm. Pass.

"I try to," I admit. I touch his hand hesitantly. "I'm sorry for making you lie. It was wrong of me."

"It's okay, Daddy." Harrison looks past me at Deb. "Everybody lies sometimes. Even Jamie. She said she was okay but she actually isn't."

"No?" I stroke my son's soft hand, pleased that my sister has worked her magic on him and brought him back to me. He shakes his head.

"No. She had a fight with Joey on the phone and she said mean words, and she cried, and when I talked to her she said she was okay, but she isn't really. She's really sad."

"Poor Jamie," I comment, thinking of Jamie's tearful appearance yesterday and Joey Quinn's stony demeanour earlier the same day. "She's going on a holiday tonight. Hopefully it makes her feel better."

I close Harrison's door and I'm standing with my sister in the school car park. There are a few other families still standing around chatting but most cars are gone now.

"You're an asshole," Deb tells me. I don't get a chance to retaliate because she opens her door and hops inside the car. I don't even want to retaliate. She's right. I am.

We go back to her house. I was right. Harrison has been turned off Hannah by his conversation with Deb and avoids her that night at home. My girlfriend is lost and upset with his sudden abandonment of their blooming friendship. She watches jealously as Deb and Harrison create a mess in the kitchen making chocolate icing that they then eat straight out of the bowl.

"Has your sister ever fed your son anything with actual nutrients?" Hannah asks me bitterly when I sit down beside her. I hand her a glass of juice and I try to remain neutral.

"Not that I recall," I admit.

"I was going to make vegetable frittatas for tonight, but I don't suppose Harrison will want anything else now that he's full of icing."

I shrug. She's right but I am not willing to do anything that will set my son or sister against me again, not right now. "He's having fun. He's probably picking up loads of baking skills-"

"Please." Hannah's interruption is a hiss under her breath. "That's not baking. There's no oven involved. Does Debra even know _how_ to bake?"

I privately admit that I don't know. If Deb's general cooking ability is anything to go by, then I would assume she doesn't get a lot of practice by way of baking cupcakes and brownies. But then I also think of Doris Morgan, Deb's mom and the woman who raised me. My personal relationship with her was never very close – she wasn't overly delighted to have me there, I imagine, and I wasn't seeking human connection from her – but she was Debra's _mom_. When Harry was spending time with me and wouldn't let Deb come, surely she was with her mother, doing daughterly things like baking or scrapbooking or whatever else mothers do with their daughters.

"I need to call Vogel," I tell Hannah, and get up and go outside. Deb watches me through the glass door as I dial. We've talked in the car about what I should say. I need to give the doctor hope without making promises. I can't seem to come around too quickly. I can't come across as being opposed to Deb's view of the situation, nor can I come across as too in sync with her. Either way makes Deb a threat to the Vogels and their plan. I must seem conflicted.

Vogel answers on the second ring.

"Dexter? I've been waiting, you know."

"I know. I needed time. I've had a lot to think about." I pause. "There's still a lot to think about."

"Of course there is," Vogel agrees soothingly. "You were taken quite by surprise. I'm sorry about the way I handled it."

I meet my sister's eyes through the door. Vogel still isn't sorry for what she did to our family. She is only sorry that I found out. She doesn't think she's done anything wrong. She thinks I will grow to understand and even celebrate her choice.

I'll celebrate by slicing her up.

"I was surprised. And upset. Harry was very important to me."

"Yes," Vogel says. "He was a very forward-thinking man. I'm sorry it ended the way it did. He and I shared, for a time, a grand vision. A vision," she redirects, as I expected her to, "that I am hoping to realise in Daniel. He is eager to learn from you, Dexter. He and I want very much for him to learn to be like you. Just. Disciplined. Purposeful. Perfect."

I nod, thinking. I decide to test the waters.

"Deb doesn't want me to help you."

Vogel is quiet for a few seconds. Rather telling, I think.

"I can understand her desire to be spiteful," she says finally. "She is very emotional, your stepsister. She wants to distance herself from me because she doesn't want to address the issue – how very Debra. I suppose it is natural that she will also try to keep you from me, too, in an effort to keep the issue at arm's length. But you know she isn't well, Dexter. She's very fragile and mightn't be thinking of what's best for you. Or herself."

"You might be right," I concede, not missing the attempt to position Deb as an 'other', as a stepsister instead of a real one, as a mental health crisis in progress, as a selfish, delicate-minded liability. "She is pretty upset. But I think she'll come around. She always does, for me. And she knows it's important to me to have, you know... a relationship with my mother."

I let this sink in. I have spent years baiting people to draw them close. I practically hear Evelyn Vogel's face split into a huge smile.

"I'm very glad to hear you say that, Dexter," she says in a soft voice. "You cannot possibly know how much I have looked forward to hearing from you. Right now, I feel like everything is falling into place. You know I used to have two sons." I make a noise of agreement, guessing where this is going. "I lost both and I have been so empty, for so long. But after tonight, I feel like my life will return to me. Once again, I am a mother of two sons. Daniel and Dexter." Fat chance of getting us together for Christmas dinner, I think, but say nothing. "I would love to see you, Dexter. Tonight?"

"No," I say, a little too quickly. "I have Harrison tonight."

"Tomorrow?" She is eager.

"I don't think I'm ready to see you yet," I say, and her silence is heavy in response. "I still need to work out some of my thoughts about Harry and I have been quite angry. I don't want to take any of it out on you." I gather that this isn't enough, so I add, "I saw Harrison's teacher today. Apparently he's been acting up at kindergarten. Deb and I have been fighting about Dad and he must have overheard some of it."

"Children are so very observant. What exactly have you been fighting about?" the psychiatrist asks, fishing as surely as I am.

"Not really fighting. More like heated discussions. Harry was a bit of a loser father, and we both know that. It's hard for us both, to assimilate the father we knew with the one we loved. It's brought up some old hurts."

All of this personal sharing seems to appease the doctor. She says something or another about how my feelings for my family seem so real. I don't listen. She's talking shit again.

"Tomorrow might be too soon but maybe some time after that?" I ask, allowing a shadow of hopefulness into my voice. "When will I be able to come and see you?"

"Oh, Dexter, whenever is fine!" Vogel says cheerfully. "I'll be free all Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and then I'm going upstate for two nights to consult on a case for a detective..." Blah, blah, blah, details I could give a fuck about. "I'll be back on Friday, though, so if we meet on Sunday and talk through some of our final issues, then on Monday or Tuesday we can make a plan for you to start working with Daniel and then start on Friday. He'll be a good student for you, Dexter, I know it."

"I don't know if I'll be able to do those days yet," I say. "What will your schedule look like after Friday? After that weekend?" Because after my little girl's birthday that weekend, I'll be back in town looking for an appropriate day to kill you.

"Oh, let's see. I think I have a consultation on Monday and a few later in the week but nothing much. And these things can always be rearranged for one's sons."

I cringe. Once I'd enjoyed the strange prospect of being a spiritual child of Dr Vogel's, but now it disgusts me. I picture my father's funeral, my sister sobbing on my bedroom floor, my sister again, asking me to kill Vogel. Of course I will. I cannot imagine any other path now.

"I have to go," I say now, as Deb quietly slides the door open and joins me on the patio, "but I'll call you again over the weekend. Once I've had some more time to think."

"Yes, of course," Vogel says happily. "We'll talk again very soon. I miss you, Dexter."

I force myself to say it back to her, although it's painful. Deb pulls a face as I hang up.

"You're sickening," she tells me, offering me one of the chocolatey spoons from her icing adventure with Harrison. I see my son inside with the bowl, a bigger spoon and a look of ill-feeling on his little face. He's had too much.

"I think she believes me."

"And what about me? Is your psycho doctor sending her psycho son after me for standing between her and her dream family of psychos?"

"Watch it, throwing that word around. You might offend someone." We grin quickly at each other. "I don't think so. She thinks you're 'fragile' and thinking only of yourself but I said what we talked about, that you were coming around slowly."

Deb scoffs at the suggestion that she could ever be fragile. We lick the chocolate off our spoons in the warm evening air. Inside, Harrison throws up into his bowl. We are both put off finishing our icing.

"Good one, Deb," I comment, watching as Hannah jumps up and runs to my son. She throws me a told-you-so look. How many of those does one need in a day? She strokes his sweaty forehead and takes him and the bowl into the bathroom.

"How was I to know he couldn't hold down his sugar? Lightweight," Deb replies, but I can see that she feels bad. She takes my unfinished spoon and drops both into an empty glass on the nearby table. "Even with the vomiting episode I'm still going to be aunt of the year for tonight. Icing for dinner is a fucking champion move. He's going to remember this in years to come, you'll see." She smiles her lop-sided smile. "He'll remember it when he's twenty and do the same thing for Astor's kid and say, 'My Aunt Deb gave me icing for dinner once'. You think he'll remember eating Hannah's fucking chicken skewers or minestrone when he's our age and looking back? Fuck no."

The talk of Harrison's eventual memories brings up an odd mix of thoughts for me. I think of Harrison's schoolbook – _I don't want my aunty to be dead too_ – and I think of my awful dream a few nights ago, in the minutes before Deb came in to sleep and chase the nightmares away. _Too late_. It scares me and I respond like I always do with her and get irritable.

"Hannah was going to make him a vegetable thing. Would have been better for him than _icing_. A bit like sushi would have been better for him than fries and a cheeseburger."

"Oh?" Deb turns to face me fully; it's been days since we last fought, and she's powered back up. I should know better. "You think sushi's better for Harrison than fries and burgers and chocolate fucking icing? What about for you?"

I didn't expect her to take this direction and I am immediately disarmed.

"For me? We're not talking about me."

" _I_ am." Deb's eyes are fiery. "You are such a selfish shit. You should love it when we talk about you." She folds her arms angrily. "You wanted the fucking cheeseburger. You asked for it. You said you didn't want sushi. So why the backtracking now?"

I really don't understand whether this is a conversation about food and diet choices or a complicated metaphor for human relationships – I can see it going either way.

"I asked for the burger so I knew you'd come back," I say, deciding to play it safe and talk both people _and_ food.

"Of course I was going to come back. I always come back. I eat all the icing and throw up in the bowl and come back for more. Every time."

I fall silent, out of arguments and fully aware now that this is nothing to do with food or what any of us want to feed Harrison. Hannah is sushi – exotic, unusual, hard work. Deb is a cheeseburger – known, beloved and synonymous with guilt. And I am chocolate icing, the tempting prize that both seem to want but only good in small doses and with the capacity to make those I love suffer.

"I am exactly like him." Deb points inside after Harrison. "I want what I love and so I keep going back for it, as much of it as I can get, even though it's bad for me and the good taste only lasts a little while before you start to feel sick on it. It's destructive but it's _living_. It's making choices and seeing them through to their inevitably depressing end." She grabs the glass from the table. "I'm the biggest fuck-up you know but at least I know what I want."

"I know what I want," I argue, half-heartedly. She doesn't believe me.

"Cheeseburger or sushi, Dexter?" she asks. "If you had to choose right now? Pick one."

She's standing opposite me, waiting. I can only give her a pained look in response. Pick one? She is asking for more than she thinks she is. Which one would I save if both were trapped in a burning building? Probably Hannah, because Deb would have saved herself, but if both needed equal saving...? I can't live without my sister, so it would be her I'd drag out first. But I can't say this, I can't say 'cheeseburger' or 'you', because she isn't just asking for my loyalty. She's asking for more, for what I have with Hannah, and I don't want our relationship to change. I say nothing.

Deb exhales angrily and turns away. She stops in the doorway.

"Make up your fucking mind, Dexter," she says, and leaves me alone with my thoughts.

She doesn't come that night. I lay awake on the couch, waiting for her, but she doesn't come at all. She chooses nightmares over me, and I'm left alone to mine.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. Views and opinions expressed here are not representative of those of Showtime, otherwise this might have been our final season.

There's light just ahead, a narrow strip of it leaking through that doorway. I shift my knife between my fingers and walk slowly closer. On the other side, I hear a pitiful, muffled whimpering sound. Is someone trapped? I wait. The sound is cut off by a series of abrupt, solid noises that I recognise as the sound of someone being stabbed repeatedly. I feel unreasonably worried.

I become aware of wet warmth underfoot. My feet are bare. It is too dark at first to see what I am walking in, but when I reach the thin panel of bright light spilling through the door, I realise it is blood. A lot of it.

I ready myself and throw open the door. Bright light blinds me and I duck away, shielding my eyes. No danger presents itself, so after a moment, when my eyes begin to adjust, I venture through. The new room is no room at all, but a shipping container. The light fades and I take in all the details. There aren't many. There's blood all over the floor, and a table in the middle with a human form plastic-wrapped down to it. One man stands over it, smiling at me.

"Brian?" I recognise my brother and approach warily. He should not be here. I killed him.

"Dexter," he replies. "I got you something. A gift."

Blood drips from the edges of the table and runs down the uneven floor of the container, over my feet. I move closer to the table and stifle an agonised moan. It is as I feared; Debra, eyes closed, coated in red. Dozens of rough stab wounds glare at me widely from her entire body and blood seeps from every single one. I reach out to her face, struck with horror. Her cheek is warm. This has only just happened.

"Too late, I'm afraid," Brian apologises, gesturing with the knife he used to kill her, which drips with blood and tissue, "but I was trying to do you a favour."

I lay the clean knife I carried in beside my sister's still form. I cannot believe it.

"How is this a favour?" I touch her hair and run my fingers to the ends, which lie in her own blood. Brian leans across her body and takes my face roughly in his hand, forcing me to look at him.

"I'm your big brother," he tells me. "I'm supposed to look after you. I had to do this, before you did it yourself."

I cannot accept what he is telling me and pull away. I use my knife, still miraculously clean despite the environment, and slice along the length of Deb's body, releasing her from the plastic. Blood spills everywhere, all over me, all the blood that was trapped between the plastic and her skin. I drop the knife and back away, horrified. Brian watches me pityingly. But he is different now. He is the Brian I remember, Biney, the child Harry left behind. I look back at my sister. She is the little Deb that first curled up on my bedroom floor, scared of night terrors, now soaked in red. When I look down at myself I see small feet and know I am the little boy Harry Morgan carried out of a shipping container many years ago. But no one is coming to save me today.

"Dexter," Brian says gently, "I told you. It's too late. You've made your choices, little brother. Now see them through to their inevitably depressing end."

I jerk awake and roll off the sofa with a soft cry. My breaths are fast and frightened and I lie still, trying to orient myself. It is dark and late. The house is silent. I slowly sit up, heart still pounding. Aside from the age-morphing siblings, that dream was much more realistic than the last one that haunted me. What does that mean? I look around but I am alone. Deb has not come tonight. My rational mind knows it's because she's mad with me but my paranoia wonders whether there might be something else preventing her from coming. Could I have done something? Might that dream be alluding to something I've actually physically _done_ , maybe in a semi-conscious state? I get to my feet and slowly, slowly walk to her door.

I am afraid of what I might find. I curl my toes on the floor and feel no wetness, no warmth. No blood. Promising sign. I carefully turn her door handle and push. The door creaks only slightly. I open it enough to look inside.

It is dark but I can tell that there is no one standing over the bed. Good, but not necessarily indicative of much if _I'm_ the one at fault. I squint at the bed. I detect no movement. I stand stock-still for as long as a minute, hardly breathing, hoping desperately that she will roll over or stretch or mumble or sigh so I can feel alright again. I want to go to her and see for myself but also do not want to, in case I've done something.

"Bad dream?" she whispers, and a huge breath is released from my lungs in a whoosh. I nod, even though she probably won't be able to tell in the darkness, and begin to feel calmer. She's fine.

"Yeah," I whisper back. "Was just checking on you."

I leave quickly, closing her door behind me and going back to the couch. I lie down and close my eyes and try to switch my brain off. Horrible images of blood, death and loss assault me. _Too late_. Too late for what? In the dreams Deb is dead and I am too late to save her, but this isn't real, obviously, because she's alive and awake in the next room. So what does this message mean? Is it a message at all? A creepy premonition? Or just a deeply held fear?

I get very little rest for the remainder of the night, sleeping only fitfully and lightly, not deep enough to dream anything else. I am distant and maybe even unfriendly over breakfast the next morning, putting Hannah offside again. She dumps a plate of pancakes in front Deb and I when we sit down silently side by side, and she stalks off to shower. Deb waits until she is gone before swapping her plate with mine – ever paranoid that Hannah is trying to poison her – and we eat without speaking to each other. Harrison sleeps in, tired from his vomiting episode last night. I drive myself to work alone.

I am only mildly efficient at the lab. My mind is full of unnerving images, some real and some imagined, and I feel scattered and anxious about being separated from my sister for a day. I know she is capable and self-sufficient but I do not like that she is not with me while Vogel and Saxon are plotting against us. The uneasy truce doesn't fool me into thinking we are safe.

I finish printing the DNA results for the latest case and file them with the rest of the work I have done on it – spatter analysis to demonstrate the trajectory of the kill weapon and height of the assailant, reports on consistency of the blood pool to ascertain time of death, things like that. I take the folder to Quinn's desk, paying only vague attention to my surroundings. He looks up and accepts the folder from me. I begin to summarise my findings automatically. He nods and we speak professionally about the case. The door of the lieutenant's office flies open and Angel Batista strides out.

"Oh, shit," Quinn mumbles when we notice the look of fury on our boss's face. "Save yourself, bro."

I am too slow to take his meaning and I am trapped there when Batista reaches us.

"You broke up with Jamie?" he demands of Quinn in a low hiss. I raise my eyebrows, comprehension setting in. Oh. Explains a few things. Quinn sighs and looks around. No one else is near enough to listen in.

"She told you," he gathers.

"Yeah, she told me." Angel is a big guy, normally a gentle giant, but when angry he can look very intimidating. "What do you think you're playing at? This is my _sister_. You broke her heart, Quinn."

Quinn stands, frustrated. "Don't you think I know that? Don't you think I feel bad enough already? I know. But I had to. She had this amazing job offer and she was going to turn it down without a thought so she could stay here with me. I couldn't let her throw all her hard work away for me."

Angel is fuming. I point over my shoulder lamely. "I'm, uh..." Going to walk away. I take a step back and no one notices. I assume this makes my getaway possible and take another one.

"Jamie thinks this is about Deb," Angel states, and I stop. I know this is none of my business but I jump in to defend my sister.

"Deb had nothing to do with it," I interject. They both look at me, as though just remembering I am there. "She would never involve herself in someone else's relationship like that."

"He's right, she has nothing to do with this," Quinn agrees, turning back to Batista. "She would never go for that. You know it. This is about me and Jamie being in different places. I really like her, Angel, you gotta know that. I like her too much to let her go to waste on me. She's got this bright future; it's better I step out of it now rather than later, when these opportunities are gone. Be honest, Angel," Quinn adds. "I was never good enough for her."

"Well, yeah," Batista agrees without hesitation, and Quinn frowns at the lack of argument. Angel sighs, distressed. "Look, Quinn... I get it. I want the best for her, too. But I don't have to be happy with the way you've handled it."

"I can respect that," Quinn concedes. Angel looks over to me.

"If Jamie asks how I reacted," he tells me, "you say I knocked him out, alright?" I nod automatically. He turns his attention back to Quinn. "And don't you tell her otherwise. Just leave her alone. And take the rest of the day off. I don't want to look at you."

The detective nods and begins to pack up his desk. I turn on my heel and head back to the safety of my lab. I collapse into my chair, exhausted with the emotional needs of normal people. To my displeasure, Angel follows me and locks himself inside with me, visibly fuming.

"That ungrateful little shit," he rants, while I look back at him silently, pretending to be sympathetic. "He's been sneaking around with my little sister all year, giving her false hope, even having her _move in_ with him. Now he just drops her like garbage? He had a great girl in Jamie but just couldn't commit."

I nod as though I agree, but really, I think this is probably for the best. Jamie _is_ too good for Quinn. He's never really gotten over Deb and Jamie deserves better than second-hand affection.

"I should have known it would go like this," Angel continues. "I mean, he dated _your_ sister and you hated it. Was he like this with Deb?"

I feel immediately bad. No, Quinn was actually great to Deb. He was pretty straightforward with her and has always acted in her best interests, even when he's been seeing someone else. Unlike me. I'm the ungrateful shit in this instance. I'm the one giving the false hope and then pulling away, unable to commit. Angel redirects before I can answer.

"I guess I should just be glad it's done," he says. "Go back to the way it was before. Thanks, Dexter," he adds as he turns to leave, as if I've said or done anything remotely helpful. "Oh – Jamie just touched down. That's what she called to say. I just didn't know she'd decided to go because of Quinn. I hope she doesn't jump into anything she isn't a hundred percent sure of."

"Jamie's smart, Angel," I speak up finally. "She'll make the right choice. You don't need to worry about her."

The lieutenant smiles at me. "You're right. I have a pretty fantastic sister." He pauses in the doorway. "We both do."

I nod and smile as he leaves and drop the smile as soon as he is gone. Yeah, I do have an amazing sister, and where is she right now? I unlock my iPhone and find her name in 'Favourites' under 'Contacts'. I dial and her smiling photo is brought up on screen. She answers and I hear the sounds of a large crowd around her.

"Deb. Where are you?" I ask, worried. She doesn't sound worried.

"The mall." I hear her talking to someone else. The noises become less pronounced. She has ducked into a shop or amenities hall. "Every fucker and their eighteen fucking kids are here shopping. You'd think it was the week before Christmas or something. It's still summer, assholes. Harrison," she calls, "over here, buddy."

"What are you doing at the mall? You're not meant to be going anywhere without me," I remind her, trying not to be abrasive but probably failing. I rub my eyes. "Were you followed?"

"I can take care of myself, jerk-face. Besides, you're not talking to me, remember?"

"I'm not _not_ talking to you-"

"And no, I wasn't followed, and I think I'm a little better qualified than _you_ to make that claim. Harrison and I are shopping for a present for Astor, and masks." She lowers her voice. "I promised him that stupid Spiderman mask and fucking _no one_ has one."

"How long are you going to be there?" I ask, checking my watch. I finish in another hour; I started early and things are relatively calm at Miami Metro at the moment.

"As long as it takes to find this goddamn mask. You want to meet us later?"

I nod, exhaling, relieved, forgetting she can't see me. She's feeling forgiving. "Uh, yes. Yeah, I will. I'll be out of here in an hour, and then half an hour to get to you-"

"Shit, wait." Deb is silent for a second; I assume she pulls the phone from her ear to check the screen. "Dex, I've got to go. I'm getting another call. See you here later."

She hangs up without saying goodbye, which is what we do. I lower the phone and watch as her photo disappears and gives way to the contacts list.

A minute later, I get a text message from her. _Having lunch with someone, meet us in the food court when you get here_.

Lunch with someone? I text back immediately, worried: _Who?_ She isn't stupid – she wouldn't be tricked into meeting Saxon or Vogel, surely? What if they used someone against her? Pretended to be someone else?

Deb's irritable response puts me at ease: _Joey. Am I allowed_? Quinn is upset and suddenly single. Yeah, he's going to go straight to Deb. I don't doubt the phone call was from him as he left the building. I don't text back.

When I finish work I head for the mall nearest to Deb's place. It's much newer than the one we met in earlier in the week. It's busy, too, though that's to be expected on a hot Saturday. Everyone is trying to get out of the sun and into the air conditioning. I make my way to the food court.

My sister, son and workmate are sitting together at a table, eating and laughing. I pause amongst the crowd of strangers and just watch them for a while. Quinn is a hopeless loser but he makes Deb smile. He adores her, and like me, he finds solace in her presence, but unlike me, he doesn't drink her dry. He gives her something back, so she keeps going strong, and they sustain each other. I wish I knew what it was. I wish I could do the same.

Harrison is happy, eating his fruit salad. He enjoys Deb and Joey's company. They don't have any darkness between them, despite their respective hurts. They only have light. They don't poison my son's day just by being in it.

I am intensely jealous of Quinn right then. How come he is so much better for _my_ family than I am? How can he sit there, looking like he belongs with them, when they belong to _me_? I stay where I am until my rage passes, then paste a smile onto my face and join them.

Quinn is a great buffer. We sit and talk for ages, avoiding all the delicate topics like Jamie, feelings and the future. I'm sure he thinks we Morgans are just the friendliest of people right now, since Deb and I act so easy with each other for appearances. Harrison delights in the mood of the conversation and makes many efforts to contribute and interact – something he usually doesn't do. Is this because we talk about such dark things around him?

Harrison mentions that he and Deb have been unable to find the Spiderman mask. Quinn surprises everyone by admitting that he has one at home, bought for a dress-up party a year before without realising that the mask was a child's size. He saves the day, agreeing to bring it in to work tomorrow. Harrison beams after him when he leaves, and I try to control my jealousy. A child's love is such a desirable thing – I can understand why Hannah and Deb compete so bitterly for it.

We three Morgans wander the shopping centre together, looking for something to give Astor. Harrison has picked out a jewel box and a card for his sister. I still need to find something to 'blow away' my daughter, since that's what Deb's promised her.

"What did you get her?" I ask while we browse a gift shop. Nothing screams 'will amaze your sixteen-year-old' here.

"Nuh-uh," Deb disagrees. "You aren't stealing my ideas."

"I just need to know how high the bar is," I plead. "I have to get her something better than you do, or I'll be the shitty dad."

Deb looks at me unhelpfully. "Dex, just buy the girl a fucking car."

"Seriously? Should I?"

"No! Of course not, she doesn't even have her goddamn licence. Fuck. She's only going to scratch the shit out of it learning." She examines a photo frame on the top shelf. Some old ladies, who have been gaping with open mouths at Deb's foul language, shuffle away. "Get her something shiny. Really shiny. And expensive. With her name engraved into it."

I eye the photo frame hopefully, and she puts it back with a frustrated sigh. She takes my still-injured hand, ignoring my wince of pain, and Harrison's and marches us out of the gift shop. She drags us to the best jeweller in the mall. She has them show us to the watch and bangle sets.

"That one," she instructs me firmly, like she did when we chose Rita's engagement ring. The jeweller looks to me for confirmation and I nod. He produces a thick, heavy gold bangle set with sparkling diamonds. There is little detailing except for a fine carving around each stone that makes them look like stars. The watch is simple but classical, and the band matches the bracelet. The face features Roman numerals. I check the price. Maybe I should just buy the car.

"He'll take it," Deb assures the jeweller. "And he wants it engraved."

We are given a notepad and draft a few messages. In the end we choose, _On your sixteenth birthday, Astor, with love from Dexter_. We wait while the message is etched into the underside of the bangle and settled into a beautiful gift box. I pay the exorbitant price without complaint and we return to our cars.

At home, Hannah watches in quiet annoyance as Deb and Harrison empty a cupboard looking for wrapping paper. Deb is not much of a homemaker and isn't one for gift-giving but she finds a stash of assorted gift wraps after a search. I am roped into assisting with the wrapping of the gifts and Hannah announces that there will be enchiladas for dinner, which she departs to prepare.

I learn that Deb got Astor a gift from the very same jeweller that she took me to. While she and Harrison unravel the wrapping paper, I take the small box from the top of the pile of unwrapped gifts. Inside is a heavy gold locket, set with a diamond surrounded by a carved star. A matching set. Like us. I can't hold in the quick smile that escapes me. I don't think she notices. This is why she directed me to the bangle and watch, certainly, but I don't mind now. I enjoy the metaphor.

Harrison takes the box from me and admires the locket. Deb shows him how to carefully open it.

"Will she put a photo of me inside there?" Harrison asks hopefully.

"She might do," Deb agrees, cutting the paper to size. "You'll have to print one for her."

"Look!" Harrison says suddenly, pulling the jewel box over and flicking it open. He places the other boxes inside. "Astor can put all her new necklaces and bracelets and stuff inside here."

"What a great idea!" Deb praises him, as though this wasn't her plan all along. "You can show her that after she opens them all." She unpacks the jewel box and sets it in the centre of the paper. "But you can't tell her until _after_. Otherwise she'll guess what the other presents are."

"And that's a secret," Harrison finishes promptly. Deb and I share a glance. Secrets have caused us too many problems lately.

"Not really a secret," I say. "A surprise. It's only secret for a little while, and then the person finds out for themselves. It's fun."

"It's like a nice secret," Harrison elaborates. He pushes away the roll of remaining wrapping paper for his aunt as she begins to wrap.

"Exactly," she says, pulling the edges of the paper tight over the jewel box and pressing down where they meet. She leans aside to tear a strip of tape from the dispenser. "It's exactly like a nice secret. It's done for nice reasons and by nice people." She expertly tapes down the edges. Harrison chooses a ribbon and he and I take over. Deb watches us silently until it comes time to tie the bow. Without needing a prompt, she uses her finger to hold the knot steady while I loop the ribbon into a bow and pull it gently to tighten. Briefly, her finger is caught in the ribbon. Our eyes meet across the present. I feel that unwanted apprehension build between us again, like it did the other night. Quietly she adds, "Some secrets are nice." Before I can start to fear what she will do about it, she withdraws her fingertip and I am able to complete the bow. She breaks eye contact, dissolving the tension of the moment, and smiles at Harrison. They start on the next gift. "But some secrets are nasty ones, and some are just in the middle."

My phone rings and I pull it from my pocket. I look back up at my sister and show her the screen. The weirdness has passed for both of us, and she looks back at me with lustless intensity.

"Vogel. What does she want?" she wonders. She continues working with Harrison but her attention is with me. "I thought you said you'd call _her_."

"I did." I turn the screen back so I can read the doctor's name as the phone vibrates in my hand. "I don't want to talk to her but I have to answer it."

"Be careful," Deb warns as I stand and slide the lock across the screen to answer.

"Evelyn?" I greet, ensuring the caller knows I was not expecting this call.

"Yes. Dexter, how are you?"

"I'm fine," I say, looking down at Deb as she whispers, "What does she want?" I shake my head to show I don't know yet. "Pretty much the same as I was yesterday, when we spoke before."

"What have you been doing today?" Really, small talk?

"I've been at work." I shrug at my sister as she raises her hand questioningly.

"But not this afternoon," Vogel disagrees. "I called in and you weren't there. And I went to your apartment but you weren't home."

"I went to some shops this afternoon," I concede, thinking fast. Is she stalking me? Only days ago Debra told her to stay away from our workplace, and now the doctor is looking for me there. "I had to get a present for my stepdaughter's birthday."

"Oh, is that coming up?" Vogel asks, as though she is interested in my personal life. Well, she is, but not this side of it. "How old will she be?"

"Sixteen. They grow up fast." I look across to the kitchen, where Hannah has stopped chopping chicken thigh to listen. "Harrison is wrapping up the present in the other room, I should get back before he makes a mess with the sticky tape." I wink at my son when he looks up at me, affronted. "I'll talk to you tomorrow or something?"

"Do you have plans for dinner tonight?"

I frown, annoyed with her choice to ignore my dismissal, and say, "Yes, I've already got it cooking. But I'll call you tomorrow, alright?"

"Perhaps I can stop by your place after dinner?" Vogel pushes eagerly. "We can talk over, say, ice cream? Or coffee?" I begin to disagree and she adds, "Or both, if you like. I'm not far away. I can pick up some ice cream and come back to your place-"

"Evelyn," I say, firmly, trying to control my temper, "I don't think you're hearing me. I'm not seeing you tonight." In the silence that follows this declaration, Deb stands, eyes locked onto me as she concentrates on overhearing the conversation. "I have my son. I'm not home. I am not ready to see you. It needs to be tomorrow or during the week." Still, silence. Deb whispers, "You pissed her off," and gestures for me to keep talking, and I try to mend my mistakes. "I'm sorry. I didn't... I still have a lot of issues to work out, obviously. I don't want to…" I watch my sister as she mouths suggestions to me. "… do any more damage to our relationship. I just need some space for now, alright?"

"I understand," Vogel says finally, though her tone indicates hurt. "You're at your sister's, aren't you?" Deb and I freeze, initially surprised that she came to this conclusion, then realise it isn't that surprising. I'm not at work, I'm not at home, I'm cooking dinner and wrapping presents – where else could I be? "Tell me the truth, Dexter. Is she there with you now?"

"No," I lie immediately. Deb leans closer to hear better. "She's with Harrison. She doesn't know I'm talking to you."

"Are you avoiding me because of her? Because she won't let you see me, or because she doesn't want to face her father's failings? Dexter, you're stronger than this!"

"I'm not avoiding you, Evelyn," I insist, though I am even angrier now. My sister this close, though, I am able to contain it. "I'm healing. I need time."

"You've had time, and you're running out of it. Daniel and I need you," Vogel says, voice firm. I sense the attempt to instruct me, to control me. My instinct is to lash out and put her in her place but I control the impulse and play along. "Daniel wants to be like you, Dexter, he really does. He wants to have purpose. He wants to learn how to control himself so he can properly be my son again, without being afraid of losing each other."

I hear her contented sigh, and suddenly understand, fully, the doctor's motives. Saxon isn't the one wanting to be like me, it's only Vogel. She wants to give him purpose. She wants him to 'properly be her son again'. She thinks if he becomes _me_ , he can avoid capture and restrain himself from hurting the people who love him. Then, in her mind, she can survive him, and she can keep him. She has seen how I love; she thinks it's only simulated, but that's enough for her. She thinks her lost son can be made to act like I do and that this will fill the gap he left in her a lifetime ago. But she has no idea. I love, but if she thinks sending Saxon to learn this from me will bring anything good, she should re-evaluate her notes on Deb. She continues, "He really wants this life, Dexter. But he's experiencing _urges_ , like you do, except he's having trouble ignoring them. He's been very moody, getting worse each day. He never had Harry to guide him, channel him. I can only do so much." She pauses, and I wait for the request I know is coming. "Dexter, if you could come and talk to him…?"

Deb shakes her head vehemently and I am already refusing. "I'm really not in a good place right now to be mentoring anybody else. I'm still working through my feelings towards my own mentor."

"Dexter," Vogel admonishes, "I know it's habit to say it, but _feelings_ isn't really the right word, is it?"

My curling fist says otherwise. I close my eyes tightly and bite down on my tongue and count to five in my head. When I open my eyes, I am looking into my sister's. I've got this.

"You're the doctor. But I am... conflicted. I'm not sure what help I can be to anyone at the present."

"Daniel really needs to hunt, Dexter. It is _difficult_ for him, waiting so patiently for you. He is trying, he really is, but he's stressed and frustrated and, as you know, eventually that can result in a very messy outcome."

"Evelyn, I'm sorry," I say finally. "I miss you, I do, but I can't do anything for you right now. Saxon is your problem. I don't have time right now to take him out hunting or whatever to help relieve whatever urges he's having. He's your son, and I've got to look after mine. I'll call you tomorrow."

I hang up, cutting off her desperate response. I stare at the phone, with its rusty-looking scratches and buttons where I have been unable to wash the dried blood off. It begins to ring again almost immediately, vibrating in my hand. Traitorous little machine. It isn't the phone's fault that Vogel is calling me back but I feel like the phone is providing her with a direct channel of influence over my life.

Deb takes the phone and blocks the call. She turns the phone off and throws it onto the sofa. She does the same with her own when, seconds later, Vogel's name pops onto the screen and the ringtone plays. The doctor's tenacity surprises me. Deb's hostility really frightened her the other night, so she must be pretty desperate to reach me if she'd even try my sister.

"Where were we up to?" she asks Harrison, sitting back down with him to start on the next present. My little son knows that something unhappy just happened but he willingly adopts her ignorant pretence and continues where they left off. I walk away before I can ruin it. I meet Hannah in the kitchen.

"What is it?" she asks in a low voice. I lean against the counter.

"Dr Vogel is trying to get me to meet Saxon as soon as possible," I tell her. "It sounds like he's staying with her and maybe getting a little stir crazy. I think..." I trail off, not really wanting to voice my opinion in case I am right. Hannah takes my hand supportively. It is nice to have my hand held but I think of the day at the cemetery, Deb's hand entwined with mine, and I prefer that thought. I continue speaking, trying block my line of thinking. Hannah is my girlfriend. I love her. "I think Vogel is having trouble controlling Saxon. I'm not sure how long she can."

"You think... he might snap?" Hannah infers. She doesn't like the sound of it, and neither do I. She forces a smile through her worry. "It won't happen, Dexter. It'll be okay. Vogel _made_ you. If she managed to control and form you, she can handle her own son."

I smile back but I know she is wrong. Vogel did invent the Code but she did not _make_ me. Harry was the one who kept me under control and directed my learning and development. Would I be what I am now had I had only Evelyn Vogel and no Harry Morgan? Certainly not – I would be like Saxon, an empty murder who killed his younger sibling. I glance back into the living room. I am an awful brother but I can sleep a little better knowing that, in one respect at least, I am slightly better than Daniel Vogel. I will never do what he did.

"Everything is going to work out for us. I know it." Hannah stands on her toes to kiss me. She places her hands on the sides of my face and closes her eyes. I remember times when we have kissed and I have been filled with unexpected passion and desire. I wait for it but it doesn't happen this time. I feel only discomfort and guilt that I am kissing Deb's nemesis in the same room as her. I don't wish them reversed, or anything, but I don't enjoy Hannah so much now that I know how my enjoyment hurts Debra. I try to be gentle as I prise Hannah's hands away and break the kiss. She doesn't understand. "What? What's wrong?"

I insist that nothing is wrong, and go back to gift-wrapping. If Deb saw me with Hannah, she pretends otherwise.

The last present is only just wrapped when there is a knock at the door. I look up and inhale sharply; Jacob Elway is outside, peering through the panel in the door rudely. What does he want? And why can't we seem to get a break, between him and Clayton and Vogel and Saxon?

"Hide, quick!" I hiss to Hannah, but she knows, and is already poised to flee. She ducks below the counter as Elway looks her way, and creeps back into the hall and out of sight. Deb goes to the door, casting a worried glance my way. It is unclear whether he saw Hannah. Harrison looks up at me, sensing another problematic situation. I touch his shoulder lovingly. "Don't worry," I say. "Your Aunt Deb will be fine."

Deb opens the door just enough to be polite but not welcoming. "Elway. What are you doing here?"

"Hi, Deb." Her former boss is friendly in tone and demeanour, but frowns in the direction Hannah went in. "How's it going?" Deb is characteristically silent in response and offers a wide-eyed, 'what-the-fuck-is-it-to-you?' semi-shrug, so he barrels on, "I was tidying out your office and found some of your things. Thought I would bring them over to you."

"You didn't have to do that," Deb says immediately of the stapler and various other non-personal items he shows her. It's clearly not stuff she really needs. "I could have dropped in. Or you could have posted it."

"No, I don't mind," Elway insists. He is standing very close to the door, and begins to push inside. "Can I...?" He ignores Deb's obvious attempt to physically block him and walks into the house. She backs off so he doesn't walk straight into her. It's now that he's standing inside that he notices Harrison and I sitting at the coffee table. He is put off by my presence; our last interaction did not end on good terms. I do not attempt to hide my distasteful expression. I am not pleased he is here. "Dexter, hi. Didn't expect to see you here. Again. And Harrison – you look bigger every time I see you, buddy."

My son acknowledges Elway with an untrusting glance and goes back to writing in Astor's card. Deb and I turn our attention back to the unwanted guest expectantly. My sister extends her hand.

"I'll have those. Thanks. You can go."

Elway pretends not to notice, and aimlessly wanders the living area, clearly looking for something out of the ordinary. He keeps looking towards the kitchen and moves definitively in that direction. I stand, suspicious and ready to help deflect him.

"I also, uh, thought I should come apologise for some of the things I said last time we saw each other," he tells Deb, though he doesn't look at her or act remotely apologetic. He circles the dining table, even though it is clearly out of the way. He must know his behaviour is becoming intrusive but he continues, brazen. "I was feeling bitter that you'd left. I should have held my tongue. I'm sorry. I was a jerk. I shouldn't have said anything about, you know..."

"No, you shouldn't have," I agree coolly, "but it's done now. Bye."

Elway ignores the dismissal and I feel my blood boiling. I am reminded forcibly of my aborted conversation with Vogel. Why can't these people take a strong fucking hint? He gestures to the chicken enchiladas that are clearly in progress on the counter.

"I didn't know you could cook, Deb."

My sister narrows her eyes. "I'm a regular bloody Nigella Lawson. What do you reckon? Dexter's here; he's cooking."

"Looks to me like Dexter's drawing with his kid." He puts down the stationery and lifts a napkin from the tabletop. "Four table settings. Expecting someone?"

"Yeah, I've got a hot date. Basketball player. Rippling muscles, you know the sort." Deb's look is challenging; Elway's face tightens. He's still bitter he can't have her and she isn't above using it to hurt him. "He'll be here shortly and I really like him, so you should leave. I don't want him to think there's something going on with me and you. That would be gross."

Up the hall, something creaks – a floorboard underfoot, or just the natural creak of a beach house, I don't know – and Elway turns to look. We Morgans don't react. Elway points in the direction of the sound.

"Sure there isn't someone else here already?"

"Not that we let in," I say, moving to stand with my sister, backing her up, blocking the unwanted visitor from following the sound, "but I don't think that door works very well. It isn't enough to deter some creeps, like the one that just invited itself in."

Elway abandons his wandering of the room to stop and give me a nasty smile. I've been overtly offensive enough to finally grab his attention. "Oh, you're very funny, Dexter. Hilarious. You know what else is funny?" He waits to see if we'll try to guess, but we are stoic, silent. I am annoyed but calm myself with imagined scenarios in which I dispatch the slimy investigator. "You two. Never one without the other. I remember being a rookie cop and seeing Harry Morgan with his two gawky-as-hell teenage kids. Then, years later, you both wind up working there, together. I saw photos from your wedding, Dexter, and you were even in his wedding party, weren't you, Deb? A bridesmaid-"

"Best man," Deb interrupts. She folds her arms. "Your point?"

I could grab a knife from the kitchen and hurl it at Elway's head. I could run at him and throw him through the window. I could run over and beat the living shit out of him. I could bypass the gift pile on my way over to him and grab some ribbon to garrotte him with. Hmm. Tempting.

"Just thinking aloud. When you worked for me, I thought it was so weird when Dexter came looking for you. Like, these two are thick as thieves – how does he not know where she is? Whatever went wrong is obviously all better now, because you're back living in each other's pockets. Like an old married couple instead of siblings." The older man eyes us. "I rang Angel Batista today and asked after you, Deb. He said you and Dexter had a fight earlier in the week but you've miraculously made up. Is that where the bruises came from? Well, well, no wonder you didn't want to talk about it, though it would make an excellent story, I'm sure."

"It's hilarious, as you said," I comment dryly. "Don't let the door hit you on your way out."

"See, what I'm thinking is, every time I see either of you, the other is there," Elway goes on, smiling without humour, "so if one is making a really bad choice, the other probably knows all about it. For example, if one was trying to hide a fugitive from the law, it would naturally be assumed that the other was helping. Because you're so _close_." He waits for this to sink in for us before dropping the offence and relaxing his face. He appeals to Deb alone. "Morgan, if your brother is keeping Hannah McKay hidden, you've got to say something. I don't want to see you go down with them."

"My brother isn't keeping Hannah McKay hidden," Deb responds immediately. Elway shakes his head, frustrated.

"You don't need to lie-" he starts, and Deb interrupts straightaway with, "I'm not lying."

"If you keep covering for him, you could end up in the cell right next to him!" he tells her angrily. He laughs bitterly. "That would be a good punch line to your lives, wouldn't it? The Morgans, the slut sister and the idiot brother, together 'til the very end... even in fucking prison."

"You watch your fucking mouth around my nephew, asshole," Deb snaps. I cringe. "He's four!"

Elway is momentarily thrown by the ridiculousness of Deb's outburst. "Me? You swear like a sailor around him!" he retorts incredulously. Harrison gets to his feet and puts his hands on his hips. He's spent a lot of time around his aunt, you see.

"My Aunt Deb can do whatever she likes," he informs Elway crossly. "It's her house."

We are all shocked by Harrison's surprise input. Deb recovers first, and turns to Elway with a triumphant smile.

"Told," she says, and gestures to the door. "Now, will you kindly get the fuck out of my house?"

"Sorry to hold you up," Elway sneers at her, but he heads to the door. "You'd better go and get started on your drinks so you're drunk enough to forget this basketball player's name by the time he gets here."

Unusually, Deb has no response, and seems to stand down. She's hurt. I've been holding back on my developing desire to hurt Deb's former boss but now I step forward without restraint. I grab the front of his shirt roughly and drag him to the door. He struggles and shoves at me but I am bigger and stronger. When he gets his hands on my neck I swipe my elbow up quickly and smash it into his jaw. It quietens him significantly. I yank open the door and throw him out onto the ground. He staggers to his feet, defensive, but I am appeased. For now.

"I may be only the idiot brother," I say in a low voice to save my son from overhearing, "but I'll fuck you up if I catch you near my slut sister again."

I wait for him to shoot me a furious look and to race back to his car. When I hear his car depart, I close the door and go back inside.

"I don't like that man," Harrison reports with a frown. Deb goes to him and scoops him up into a cuddle.

"Me neither," she agrees. "But I like you." She kisses his hair and smiles over at me. She mouths, "Thanks," and I smile in return, glad to have been able to do something right for once. Right for her, anyway. My boy might not thank me in years to come when he recalls his dad violently throwing a loser out of the house like I just did. For now, though, even he is happy.

Harrison recounts Elway's visit to Hannah, and she is moody for the rest of the night. My son's version of the story focuses on the visitor's nastiness towards his undeserving aunt and his dad's heroic act of throwing this villain out. Hannah can't help but notice the positivity that flows between my sister and me now that we're over our latest issues with each other. Hannah makes a concerted effort to be unhappy with me. We all eat enchiladas for dinner and talk very little. The atmosphere is stark and antisocial, a sorry contrast to lunch today with Joey Quinn.

At night I am woken by Hannah. She wears nothing. She whispers seductive things into my ear about our future, a life together, an endless expanse of time in which she is all mine and I am all hers and we can have as much of each other as we want. She kisses me deeply and tugs at my clothing.

I can't. I don't even want to. I feel bad. She doesn't understand; hell, I barely do, either, so how can I expect it from her? I push her away and tell her I'm tired and stressed. I stroke her hair and tell her she's beautiful but that I don't want this right now.

"It's Debra, isn't it?" she whispers. I see the hurt reflecting from her moonlit eyes. "You two aren't normal siblings."

"Not this again," I whisper back, harshly, withdrawing my hand from its rhythmic petting of her hair. "I told you, that's insane. She's my sister."

"But you don't want me right now because of her." Hannah is certain, and I cannot argue. She's right. "Because she doesn't like me. I was right before – I never stood a chance against her. You love her more than me."

"No!" I insist, weakly, I'm sure. The truth isn't something that will allow me to keep her. "I love you both the same, just... differently."

Hannah stands and glares down at me.

"You need to make up your mind about what you really want," she informs me softly, and leaves. I am left alone again. I am regretful that she is upset but I am relieved she is gone.

I plagued with nightmares.

I find myself back in that dark space with the narrow panel of light dead ahead. I feel that knife in my hand and hear that frightened, muffled noise. Deb. I recognise this scenario and recall that my sister is trapped in the shipping container beyond that door, and if I sneak and move slowly like I did last time, I will be there in time to find her dead. I am being given another chance.

"Deb! Brian, don't!" I shout as I barge through the door. I am blinded at first by the light but I keep running, knowing where I will find my brother and sister. I close my hand instinctively; I catch Brian's hand and its plunging knife, as I did years ago, directly above Deb's chest. The light changes and my eyes adjust. Brian's face shows his surprise. I look down at my sister and I breathe with relief. She is conscious, alive, looking at me with terrified hazel eyes. I have saved her. I am not too late.

I shove Brian away and he tries to overpower me.

"You're wasting your time, little brother!" he yells at me, frustrated. "She's already lost. I'm trying to help you. I know you don't want to be the one to do it, so for Christ's sake, just let me!"

I have grown to be bigger than my older brother and I throw him against the metal wall of the shipping container. He slides to the floor, apparently unconscious. I turn back to my miraculously living sister and slice along the length of her to free her from the plastic. She and I both pull on the binding around her head. The wrapping gone from over her mouth, she breathes deeply and desperately and sits up, shaking. She throws her arms right around me. I clutch her close and her mouth finds mine as though by magnetism. It's a dream, so it doesn't seem weird to be kissing her.

Our lips are hard together for only a second when she gasps into my mouth. I pull away, concerned. Her eyes are huge, full of pain and filling with tears.

"What? What is it?" I ask. She draws a shuddery breath and blood wells on her lips. "Deb, what's wrong?"

"This is the cycle, isn't it, Dex?" she stammers, a trickle of blood running down her chin. I wipe it away with my thumb, uncomprehending. "You always hurt me most when I think you're loving me. Just when I think everything's right."

She leans away from me and we both look down. I cry out. My knife is buried in her stomach, just below her ribcage, and my hand is still on the hilt. Blood runs down her from the massive wound, spilling over her lap and from the table to the floor. I have done this.

"I keep trying to tell you," Brian speaks up from the floor, where he sits in a disproportionate pool of blood. "You were going to do it sooner or later, and now you have. You're _too late_. You've kept her so long that she doesn't even want to save herself anymore."

I stare at what I've done, horror-struck. I look up into my sister's eyes. "Deb..."

"Dex," she begs, frightened, as more blood escapes her mouth. She seizes my hand over the knife and pulls hard. The blade slides out of her – it can't have been _that_ deep, she's too skinny – and the blood rushes free, unobstructed. I shout at her to stop but she doesn't let up until the whole knife is out and she and I are both urgently pressing our hands to her bare abdomen to stem the bleeding. It's no use.

"Deb, Deb!" I shout, helpless. "Deb, I'm sorry."

Brian stands and walks over as my sister begins to slump in my arms. I lay her back on the table so I can use both hands to cover the wound. By the time Brian reaches us, he is no longer Brian. He is Harry, and looks down at his dying daughter with regret. He drinks from a water bottle, chokes and falls behind the table. I don't have time to save him but I do lean over Deb quickly to see what becomes of him. I wish I hadn't. Harry is now Harrison, sitting dejectedly in the blood. He looks up at me.

"Daddy, I didn't want my aunty to get dead."

My attention is ripped back to my sister as she makes a final effort to help me stop the bleeding. Her shaky hand rests over mine.

"Dex?" she whispers, in an even voice that doesn't match her current situation. Her eyes close. "Dexter? Wake up. You're dreaming. Dexter!"

I'm roughly shaken awake and open my eyes to Deb's. It's dark in her living room, and she's kneeling beside me, looking at me with concern. I gasp relieved breaths and try to sit up to see her stomach. She gently but firmly pushes me back down by the shoulders. She seems fine.

"Shh," she whispers, and pushes my hair from my sticky forehead. I am sweating all over. I reach out into the dark to feel her stomach. I find where my knife stabbed her in the dream and find her whole, unpierced. I knew she would be fine but I feel better immediately upon finding this evidence. My hand drops and I work to control my breaths. I am not prone to nightmares. This plague of them is unsettling me. It's got to be the pressure - Vogel, then Elway, trying to hustle in on my life and my plans, and then the constant fighting and making up with my sister. It must be affecting me quite deeply if I'm killing her every night in my dreams. I try to apologise. Deb blows gently on my face, something her mother used to do for us when we had a fever. "It's alright. You were dreaming. I heard you muttering and tossing about from my room."

"It's not alright," I argue, lowering my voice as she shushes me again. " _I'm_ not alright. I keep dreaming that..." I can't tell her. "What I keep seeing isn't alright. I don't – I can't... I don't want to lose you. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry-"

"Dexter," she says, so softly, "it _is_ alright. I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere." She leans down and I recall our brief kiss in my dream. She presses her lips to my temple instead. The contact is as good as medicine; I relax and my eyes drift closed. She rearranges herself into a more comfortable position on the floor beside me and continues to run her fingers through my hair. Every time her fingertips meet my scalp I am coaxed more deeply into a state of calm. She is magical, I am sure of it. She can always so this. She can bring me back from anything. She must lay her head on the sofa next to mine, because that's where her next words come from, just before my grasp on wakefulness fades. "You're never going to lose me, Dexter."


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I have no affiliation with Nigella Lawson or Coca Cola and they have no idea that they feature in this work.

I sleep in on Sunday and wake to find my sister has already left for work. My phone, still switched off from yesterday, is on the coffee table in front of me with a post-it note attached. I recognise Deb's handwriting.

 _Switch on at your own risk. I had six voicemails/texts from her_. I sit up with a sigh. I know she's referring to Vogel, and figure that if Deb's got six messages, I must have hundreds. I am grateful that the doctor hasn't been brave enough yet to come back here. Deb really scared her. I turn the phone on and find nine voice messages and twelve texts. The tone moves from angry and blame-filled to desperate and worried and then on to apologetic and pleading. I am unsettled by Vogel's transformation. This isn't the strong, wilful woman who accosted me outside Miami Metro with pictures I drew as a child. This woman is splitting at the seams.

I gather from the content of the messages that Vogel is finding that keeping a serial killer as a pet is not as easy as she thought. I wonder whether she is gaining a renewed respect for Harry Morgan and whether she regrets killing him now. He probably could have come in handy at a time like this, when both her son and I are pulling away from her control. Daniel Vogel is apparently struggling with his rehabilitation. She reports that he is moody and making threats against her life and mine, but adds each time that he won't act on it, honestly, and that he is just frustrated and really needs to see me. Ha. Like I'm stupid enough to throw myself into that.

I admit, I am somewhat worried that Saxon will snap in the coming days under his mother's heavy, controlling hand and go out and kill some poor innocent random walking their dog past Vogel's house, but this is just an unfortunate side-effect. My priority has to be my own family, and they are relying on me and my careful planning to keep them safe. I just need to keep Saxon and Vogel at bay for another week – this time next Sunday, I'll be getting ready to leave the Bennetts' house to return here and kill the Vogels. If some strangers die in the meantime... Well, it's unfortunate, like I said, but that'll just be another reason to put Saxon down.

Harrison wants to make sandcastles on the beach, so I sit on the patio to watch him, sipping a coffee. Hannah comes out, emanating coldness, and sits on the other chair. She has her bathrobe wrapped tightly around herself even though the morning is already warm. She glares out into the day. I wait for her to speak. It takes a little while, and when she does, her voice is cutting.

"Did you sleep with her instead?"

I almost choke on my mouthful of coffee and it burns my unsuspecting throat. "Seriously? No! Why do you keep asking that? Do you want a different answer or something?"

"Something woke me up, later, after I went back to bed. After you _rejected_ me," she reminds me frigidly. "I came out to see if you were alright and I heard you muttering a name – and it wasn't mine. _She_ came out, too, and you were whispering together, and I realised I wasn't needed." She tightens her folded arms, upset and angry. "Is this the way it's going to be now, Dexter? Am I not needed anymore? Only, let me know, will you?"

"You were never needed," I say, abruptly. I see from the look on Hannah's face that this wasn't the right thing to say, so I try to fix it. "I just want you."

"But not last night?"

"I want you in my life. We don't need each other and I like that. We are together out of _choice_. We could survive on our own but we choose not to. We choose to be with each other."

I extend an arm, an offer of peace, and Hannah acquiesces, moving to sit on my lap. I am mildly disappointed with the lack of challenge she presents but remind myself that I like how easily she comes back to me. It's healthier than what I am used to. I only need a little bit of bait with Hannah, and she comes willingly. There's no fight, no struggle to reel her in, no breaking her into pieces in order to get a hold on her.

"I like that we choose each other, too," Hannah says, tracing circles on my shoulder. "I used to think the same, that I just want you and nothing more. But what if that's changing? What if I _need_ you now? I love you so much, Dexter," she says, looking me in the eyes. "I don't want to lose you."

I look back at her, recognising my own fears inside her. I hear my own words in her voice. We are terrified of losing our other half. Too bad that my other half isn't her. I open my mouth to say the right thing, the definitive answer, the same thing Deb said to me in response to that, but it doesn't come out.

"Don't worry, it'll be fine," is all I say, when what I know I should have said was _you're never going to lose me_.

I call Vogel. She is incredibly relieved to hear from me and apologises for some of her harsher messages. She admits that her son became quite volatile yesterday and that many of her calls to my sister and I were made from inside a locked bathroom while he ranted about the house. She claims he's much better today but I can tell she is shaken. I feel a twinge of guilt for ignoring Vogel in such a frightening situation but remind myself that she wanted this. It was her idea and she couldn't be talked out of it. She needs to learn to live with her decisions. My mind flashes on Harry, his kind eyes in particular, and Deb, a ball of tears on my bedroom floor the night of his death, and my guilt evaporates. Vogel will be dead in a week or so. What difference is it to me if she spends those days regretful and scared? It will make the false murder-suicide I have planned for her and her psychotic son all the more poetic. And after everything she has put my family through, she is getting back what she deserves.

When Vogel begins to push to see me, I withdraw. I am not sure how long I will be able to put this off but I will try for as long as possible. She becomes panicky and demanding when I turn down her invitation to lunch and then to dinner and when I am vague about making a concrete date and time. I am adamant that I am still working through my issues, and confess that I have been having trouble sleeping, but I don't share the content of my dreams. I expect her to soften when confronted with my problems but she tries only to exploit them, promising to be able to help me sleep better if I come over for a counselling session.

"It will be good for the three of us," she tells me firmly. "You and me, and Daniel. We can talk everything over and get everything out into the open. Clean slates. We can start over fresh before we start on this new journey together."

"I have Harrison today," I say immediately, using my son as an excuse as I often do. The doctor is not put off.

"Bring him with you."

"I'm _not_ bringing my son anywhere near yours," I snap, overcome with protectiveness. "I'll come and see you when my babysitter comes back from her holiday."

"Can't you leave your son with Debra?" Vogel pushes. She doesn't sound offended by my clear disdain for her son.

"And say what? I'm off to meet _you_? I'm sure she'll happily just let me walk straight out the door without an argument-" I stop when I hear a shuffling noise on the other end of the line, and soon gather that the phone has changed hands.

"Hello, Dexter."

I quietly close the glass door so Hannah and Harrison, who aren't paying me much mind anyway, don't overhear. On the other end of the line, Vogel's voice becomes more distant. I assume the same thing has been done there.

"Saxon. I hear you've been a little difficult for your mother."

"Oh, you know how it is," Saxon answers smoothly, a hint of a smirk colouring his tone. "All little boys like to test the boundaries sometimes, but it doesn't change how they feel about their moms. You must remember – oh. No. I'm sorry, I forgot. Your mom died, in front of you, didn't she? You were so young." He tuts sorrowfully. My lip twitches. "My mistake. But surely, with your little boy, you must have noticed how special the relationship is between a mother and her son... Oh, that's right. Your son lost _his_ mother, too." He sighs as though apologetic. My eyes are closed. I see Saxon's blood running in red waterfalls down the backs of my eyelids. "So much loss. No wonder you latched on so quickly to _my_ mother."

I sit on the arm of the sofa. This is what his problem with me centres on. I have stolen his place in his mother's heart, and so he wants a piece of my brain. Fair enough, but if I could give him Vogel's heart back, I would do it without hesitation. I wish I could. It would make everything else much simpler.

"No wonder," I agree, unable to help myself from fucking with him. "That makes sense, I suppose. I wonder why she's so eager to have _me_ around then?"

Saxon is silent for a moment, stewing. Finally he says, "Must be your winning personality."

"Sounds like you've got me all figured out," I comment emotionlessly. I need to control this conversation and work against my urge to piss him off. "Forgive me for not being as quick as you. I'm having trouble figuring _you_ out." I allow a pause for Saxon to understand that I am redirecting. We are both alert, fully aware that the other is playing us. It's a delicate dance. "Dr Vogel keeps saying that you want to change and to learn the discipline to control your Need, but you seem pretty disciplined to me already. I mean, three times you've killed, in totally different ways, without slipping into your own modus operandi, and managed to make it look like someone else's crime."

"Three times?" Saxon's voice is sly. "Yates, Cassie, the asylum? I didn't do a good job on my brother, admittedly – Mother knew. But there have been more than three, Dexter. And, I expect, there will be more."

"I'm not sure what Vogel thinks I can do for you," I say calmly. I pretend not to notice the implied threat. "You have managed for long without the Code. Why introduce it now?"

"My mother wrote the Code. It's her creation, her child. My brother. My missing piece. So I want it. Simple as that."

I actually believe him. I still think he wants to kill me and cut my head open, but I believe what he says. He wants my Code. He wants to take it from me, make it his, before he kills me.

"That's beautiful," I say, condescension tinging the edges of my voice. "Evelyn is a great teacher. You'll learn a lot from her, and you two will be very happy, I'm sure."

"I can't learn it from her." Saxon is adamant. "I need to learn it from you. Mother doesn't understand. We are only frustrating each other, doing damage. I need to work with you, Dexter, and soon. I'm not sure how long I can hold this feeling back. I need to kill."

"Dr Vogel said you were doing much better today," I comment, faking surprise that does not convince him. "She said you really want this. I know if you really want to, you'll hold back."

"It's a steeper learning curve than I expected," Saxon says, ever smooth. "I have gone years before without it, but now that I know I _can't_ , it's overwhelming. Come over and see us, Dexter. Help me. Help me to be like you. For Mother."

"I can't today," I remind him. Weirdly, I feel like I am both helping him and working against him. "Abstain. You'll surprise yourself with how capable you really are."

"I don't think so," Saxon disagrees. "This can only end badly. Bottling it up, holding it down... You need to come and help me. I don't know what will happen when I explode, who will get hurt..." He waits for me to digest this threat. A few faces jump to mind. "I just know it will be unpleasant. Reconsider, for Mother? She is both of ours now, after all."

His tone doesn't change but I feel the hatred in him. He is as conflicted as I am. He hates me, wants me dead, but he wants to be what his mother hopes and thinks he can only get that from me. What a sorry bunch of psychopaths we all are.

"She will always be yours first," I tell him, deciding to back down rather than inflame the situation. "I can't do anything for you today."

"Then when?"

"I'm not sure when."

"Me neither," Saxon says, and I gather he's referring to something else, something to be concerned about. "Alright then. I understand. I'll do my best. Have a nice day, Dexter Morgan."

He hangs up and I am left feeling uncertain. I don't think I won that, although I have no way of knowing. Vogel does not try again to call me during the day. This does not make me feel much better. I text my sister every hour to check in with her. She is fine; she is working; she is busy; she is having lunch with some of the guys; she is overseeing an interview; she is writing a very dull report; she is at the gym with Quinn. I try not to be too anxious.

I call Cody. He is delighted to hear from me, and I tell him I will be arriving at his grandparents' house around midday on the Saturday. He tells me he has gotten me a mask so I don't need to worry about finding one. He is excited that his aunt and brother will be arriving on Wednesday afternoon. Apparently the children are having the Friday off from school to go to Disneyworld with Deb and Harrison.

"We've been a bunch of times so it's not that great anymore," Cody says dismissively, though his actual excitement is easy to read. "But, you know, Harrison will have fun. And Aunt Deb will probably want to go on all the rides that Grandma and Grandpa don't like, so at least we'll have an even number of people to fill the seats." He seems to realise that he's elaborated a while on a topic that is meant to be dull to him, and quickly changes the subject. "It sucks so bad that I still have to go to school on Thursday. I have a history test and Grandpa won't let me skip it. Astor has to go, too. But Grandpa _kind of_ made it sound like Aunt Deb might pick us up early."

I know nothing of this plan and so make no promises. At the end of the phone call I tell Cody that I will see him in less than a week, and he quickly sneaks in, "I love you," before he hangs up.

Hannah is less icy with me but we don't talk much. I have little to say to her and apparently the feeling is mutual. Harrison isn't worried about the division between us. He spends the day entertaining himself with an electric race track that he builds. Deb, having never had her own kids, has spent a considerable amount of money on him over the years, and even if her house is less than 'kid-friendly', she always has a box of toys stashed away under the spare bed. Oddly, unlike at my house, Harrison doesn't tend to make a mess with these toys. He doesn't even all that often get them out. It's not because he doesn't like them – he spends hours playing with them once he gets them out. He knows where they are and that they are for him (there are no other little kids in his aunt's life) but he usually waits for an adult to retrieve them for him. Once he has the box out, he plays for ages, and then packs it all back when he is done. I don't know why he has so much more respect for Deb's house and Deb's toys. He isn't like this at home.

Deb comes home and throws herself onto the couch next to me, pressing a bottle of beer into my hand and swigging back a mouthful of her own. She tosses her shoes and they scatter across the floor. Hannah eyes my sister with disdain. We watch the news. The Castners are still looking for Hannah's husband, whose case has been scaled up to a full-blown missing person's search focussed in Miami. Hannah's photo is shown. A low weather system off the coast is worrying some climate experts. It is summer and hurricanes can easily develop.

Hannah puts Harrison to bed and when she comes back, we talk about my interesting conversation with Vogel and Saxon. Deb's phone goes off. She speaks briefly with Batista. I gather from her expression that the news is not great for us.

"There's been a call to the hotline," she tells me once she's hung up. She goes looking for her shoes and stands on one foot, pulling one boot over her heel. "Someone actually took note of the photo we put out there when Saxon disappeared and reckon they recognised him hanging out downtown where I used to work Vice. Like," she adds, sitting on the arm of the chair to pull on the other shoe, "less than ten minutes ago. Like, now."

"He's there now?" Hannah asks, surprised by the efficiency of Miami Metro, and I frown and say, "That's a dodgy area. What's he doing there?"

"Fucked if I know." Deb finishes with her shoes and goes for her gun and holster. "Angel seems to think he's still there, just hanging around, so it doesn't sound like he knows he's been done in."

"Or he _does_ know, and he's waiting around to be spotted and for you to arrive on-scene," I counter, calculating the likeliness of this possibility. It's definitely possible. I stand. "Deb, you can't go."

"I have to go," she disagrees. She buckles the holster around her hips. "If Saxon doesn't see Angel and everyone else coming at him, they could fucking catch him. I have to be there to make sure they don't get him alive." She finishes with her belt and looks at me. "They _can't_ get him alive."

I agree fully with that, but I don't agree with anything else. "They're not going to catch him. He's too smart for that. He isn't just there, in some street full of hookers, chilling out for no reason. He's baiting you. Trust me." I should know what it looks like. I do it all the time.

"I trust you," she answers, grabbing her bottle of beer from the coffee table and knocking back the last of it. "But you should trust me, too. I can take care of myself. I'll let you know what I find."

"I'll come with you," I decide, but Deb pushes her empty bottle into my hands.

"I don't think so, bro," she says. "As useful as I know you to be I'm not sure how to explain bringing my lab geek brother out on a sting. Just stay here. If," she says now, as I try to argue, "Saxon really is baiting us, he might expect you to come with me. He could come here while we're out. So stay here and protect Harrison. And your skank," she adds, gesturing apologetically at Hannah for originally omitting her. Hannah's return look is hateful. Deb smiles, pleased to have won a round, and backs over to the kitchen counter for her car keys. I put the bottle down. I understand her logic and agree someone needs to stay here but I still don't think Deb should leave. I say so. I follow her and try to take the keys out of her hand when she heads for the door. "Jesus, Dex, have a little faith. I'll be alright. I'm tough, remember? And I do have more than two brain cells to rub together."

"It's not that I don't think you're smart or capable," I insist, tone clipped with the effort of restraining myself from dragging her to the sofa and handcuffing her there so she can't leave. "It's that I don't want anything to happen to you."

"I have to find out what he's doing there," Deb says. She goes to the door and opens it. I am right behind her, determined that she will not leave. "He could be lining up a victim."

I manage to stop myself from saying, "Good. Better some hooker than you." I don't think she'll like that. Instead I grab her and hug her tightly. Her chin sits perfectly on my shoulder, as always. She loops her arms loosely around my waist and I say, into her ear, "I couldn't live with myself if you died because of me."

We stay like that for a few seconds, then she pulls reluctantly away. Her gaze is drawn to my mouth and stays there for a beat and I wonder if she's going to try it. She doesn't. She presses a kiss to my cheek as she withdraws. I see in her eyes that we are both thinking of my nightmares, even though she doesn't know the exact content. I'm sure she sees in my eyes the same fear I see sometimes in Hannah's. She smiles. She has the best smile.

"You remember what I said, don't you?" she checks. I nod, thinking on those precious words from last night. _You're never going to lose me, Dexter_. Is that a promise? I ask. She says yes. I know it's a fool's promise and I'm a fool for believing her, but it's the best she can give and so I accept it like a fact. "Just keep thinking on that 'til I get back, alright?"

She moves out of my arms and starts towards her car. I am reminded forcibly of Tuesday night and am struck with terror, again, that she might not come back. Then, I allowed her to go off in search of fast food. Now I'm sending her into Saxon's hands. Because she wants to. I find myself shaking with the impossibility of this. How can there be any reason good enough to let her leave right now? My feet continue to follow her.

"Dexter, fuck," Deb mutters when she notices me still behind her on the driveway. "I'm going. You can't come. End of story."

End of story. She's the greatest story ever told – I can't imagine a world in which that story has ended. I shake my head. I prepare to explain to her that I absolutely cannot let her leave, that I will take Angel Batista's wrath tomorrow when he demands to know where she was and that nothing she can say will change my mind. I prepare for the epic battle of wills that is surely coming. I prepare for screaming, hitting, shoving, grabbing, name-calling.

"Dexter." It's Harry, standing at my shoulder. "Think about what you're doing. Debra is not one of your tools. She's a person, a special person to you. You are trying to control her – the same as Vogel is trying to control you. Or like Elway, or even Saxon."

"It's different."

"What's different?" Deb asks. Harry spares her a displeased look, unhappy that I have spoken out loud and included her in our conversation. Our conversations were always our own, not for her.

"Your sister is extremely competent. She isn't going to do anything stupid. You need to let her breathe. You're holding her too tight – you'll only break her. Again. Even though you're trying to do right by her," Harry adds, knowing my thoughts as well as I, "you'll end up suffocating her. She wants to go. If you stop her she'll only fight you on it. Is this what you want? More of the same? I thought you said it was time to break the cycle, Dex?"

My father is right, even if I don't like it, and my sister is waiting for me to answer her. I take a difficult step back.

"Go. Just... be careful?"

She flashes me that smile. "Always." She gets into her car. She backs out the drive and into the street. Just before she drives off, I call after her, "Bring me back a-" but she interrupts me, calling back, "I know. A cheeseburger. I'm on it."

I don't know if cheeseburgers have magical boomeranging qualities but I go back inside feeling like I've done all I can. I lock the doors and sit back down where I was before. Hannah watches me coolly but says nothing. I don't try to engage her in conversation. I am not really interested. The person I most want to be here isn't.

My phone rings almost a dozen times. My heart leaps each time for just an instant and then I see that it's just Vogel. I don't want to talk to her, either. I am afraid of what she might tell me. Has Saxon nabbed my sister from the street into a back alley and dragged her back to Vogel's? I know I should answer – she is a valuable source of potential information. But I don't. I block each call. I can't imagine the doctor ever telling me something I want to hear. She never has before.

After half an hour of silence, Hannah turns the television off and asks me, "When _I'm_ not around, what are you like?"

"Hmm?" I am hardly paying her any attention. "What do you mean?"

"Do you sit and count the seconds until you can see me again when we're apart?" She tries to cut me with her voice but it has no power with me. She isn't as strong or scary as she thinks she is. "Will you miss me when I'm living in Cuba and you're stuck here?"

"I imagine so," I reply. It's the wrong answer. Hannah stands, fed up, and says, "Glad to hear it. I'm going to bed to read or something."

I watch her go, feeling nothing. I have hurt her, again. It brings me no joy to do so but it also doesn't rebound and hurt _me_ right now. I am not normal; I don't have the capacity to worry about Deb's safety _and_ Hannah's happiness. I can't be good and loving to two people at once, apparently.

I wait another fifteen minutes before I get the quick text from Deb – _Gone, bolted_ – that allows me to finally relax a little. She's alive. Has her fingers. Is in a relaxed enough situation that she was able to get off a text message. But I still worry. Even now, Saxon could be stalking my sister, watching her from shadowy windows, waiting for Angel or one of the other cops to turn their backs.

And speaking of windows... I have been sitting in this same chair for almost an hour, staring sightlessly out through the glass door and into the darkness. Until now nothing has changed. Now... I am sure I see a shadowy figure, beyond the reach of the lights of Debra's house, or is it my imagination? I squint and stand. My phone is clutched in my hand as I take measured steps towards the door. The shape shifts. Maybe a tree, blowing about in the wind? The glare of the kitchen lights reflects off the glass door and blurs my view. I flick the locks and slide the door quickly open. In the same instant my phone begins to vibrate in my hand. Instinctively, knowing who this will be, my eyes betray me and leap down to see the caller's photo. I wrench them back up to where the danger might lie.

There is nobody, and nothing, out here. The night time breeze is gentle. Deb is right. I am getting paranoid. I answer her call and lock the house back up.

"Hey, Deb. What's up?"

"The cocksucker got away," she tells me. "He was definitely just here. Six different girls identified him from the photo. A dozen more said they thought so but weren't a hundred percent."

"What was he doing all the way over there? It's not exactly a stroll down the road from Vogel's."

"No idea. Apparently he just walked up and down the strip, checking out all the girls. Even talked to a few. They said he was real fucking polite, too. Just asked for their names and how much they charge, then said thank you and walked away."

"Did he leave with any?"

"That's what we're trying to work out now," Deb admits with a sigh. "Most of these girls don't want a bar of us. There're two who remember me from when I worked out this way and they've been more helpful, but they didn't see anything. It's hard to work out if there's anyone missing because there's still a bunch of girls out, you know. Working. So we're going to wait a few hours and hopefully gain the trust of some of these ladies, and get them to call us tomorrow if there's anyone who doesn't come home."

"What did they look like?" I ask suddenly. "The ones he talked to?"

"They look like hookers, Dex."

"You know what I mean. Hair, skin."

"There were a few. I only spoke to one. Caucasian, long black hair. Quinn's still talking to one of the others. Fucking flirt." I imagine her glaring at his back. "She's tall, real pale. Long hair again. What does it matter? Saxon doesn't have a 'type' as far as we've been able to tell."

"I don't know. I thought..." I cringe. The topic of latent sexual feelings within families is not the most tactful one to bring up with her. "Saxon is fixated on his mother. He came out of hiding to reconnect with her. He wants to kill me because he's worried she cares more for me than him. I wondered whether any of the girls might have looked remotely... Vogelish."

"Ew, Dex." Deb is disgusted. "That's fucking gross." But she considers my theory. "You think he might be looking to take his frustrations out on a Vogel lookalike? Did Vogel ever have long hair, maybe when he was a kid? You think he might want to... fuck his mom? Figuratively?"

"Or literally?" I add. I go to her fridge and dig around for something small to snack on. I find that chocolate mousse over the back and pull it out to eye it. It looks amazing. Deb has worked out every day since making her resolution but hasn't had a single day of what I would call 'clean eating'. By her own restrictions, she's not allowed it. I doubt reminding her of that will be a good enough cover if she discovers that I've eaten it, so I reluctantly put it back. "And does he want to fuck her, or fuck her up? He did warn me he was on the edge. Maybe he jumped."

"I'm going to be so pissed if we find some girl with her head cut open," Deb comments, frustrated. "We were so fucking close. We missed him by that much."

"You don't want to catch him, remember?" I remind her, choosing a less exciting vanilla yoghurt for my snack instead. She snorts with derision.

"I remember. I want the chance to _shoot_ this fucker. He fucks me off."

I sigh and go looking through the cutlery drawer for a spoon. I decide against lecturing her about what kind of person she is, how she doesn't really want that at all and how murder will make her feel in the long run. She knows. She's just angry. I finally just say, "You let me deal with him. When will you be home?"

She estimates another two hours and I tell her I'll wait up for her. She takes three. I am waiting, playing solitaire on her computer. I stand immediately, grateful to see her, but she tells me, "Don't stand up. You're making me feel even more tired." She looks worn out. She throws her things down on the couch with even less ceremony than when she came home earlier and comes to see what I'm doing. I sit back down obediently and she drags a dining chair over to sit beside me. She collapses into the chair. She kicks off her shoes and leans into me, resting her head on my shoulder.

"Told you I'd be back," she mumbles into my sleeve. "Can't get rid of me that easy. You've got a black four there," she informs me, pointing to the screen where I have a move available to me that I hadn't noticed. We play for a few minutes. She yawns.

"Tired?" I guess, for lack of better things to say.

"Fucked. We got nothing. Just walking back and forth up that stupid street trying to talk to these chicks who want nothing to do with us. Looks like Saxon left alone. None of the girls noticed anyone missing by the time we got out of there."

"So he didn't find what he was looking for," I conclude. I continue my game; Deb is against my left arm so the movement of my right one as I manipulate the mouse does not disturb her. "He might have seen you guys pull up and made a run for it. You turning up when you did might have saved someone tonight."

"Yeah." Deb is unenthused. "But if he didn't take anyone, maybe you were right in the first place. Maybe he was just testing the waters, baiting us to see what our response time is like. What a motherfucker." She doesn't even seem particularly wrathful towards Saxon. She pulls her ankles up onto the chair beside her. "No action here?"

I hesitate on telling her about the spectre outside. She's too tired to notice my pause. "No action here," I confirm. "Just cards. I won the last seven games. I'm having a dream run."

"Fuck," Deb says, "Dex, I forgot your fucking cheeseburger! I'm sorry."

"That's alright," I answer. I lay my cheek on the top of her head, hoping she can sense the affection I feel for her. "You brought back what I really wanted."

Deb doesn't answer. I keep playing. It's a few minutes before I hear her soft breathing change and realise that she's gone to sleep. I close my eyes for a while and just listen. I love this. I love that, for all the ways I use and hurt her, there is still a way in which she can use me back. I am useful. I am... needed. And wanted. She chooses to be near me because, despite all the bad, she _wants_ to. She loves me. I love her. I am loath to wake her, though I'll have to eventually. I finish my game, not rushing at all.

I shut down the computer and lightly nudge my sister awake. She comes to very quickly but remains dozy. I walk her to her door. She hugs me tightly and whispers her request into my shoulder: "Stay?"

I run my fingers through the ends of her hair, lightly tugging on some little knots. I think on the last time she asked this, and the two meanings her words carried. Tonight, what does she mean? Fall asleep beside her again? Or never leave? It seems so long ago that I foolishly thought I should run away to Argentina and we fought out our frustrations with each other on the beach, and I remind myself it was less than a week ago. I think of all that's been said, done and felt between then and now. I feel like agreeing to both versions of 'stay'.

Then Deb adds another meaning. She pulls back just enough to look at me and touches my face with her fingertips, lightly tracing the contours of my cheek and lips. An invitation. An invitation to more. Stay. She is so close, it would be easy. She would let me. She might like it; _I_ might like it. I think of our short kiss in my dream. I have no knife this time. What's the worst that can happen? Hope and uncertainty shine in her eyes, eyes just like mine.

But I am her big brother; it's my job to protect her, even from me. She thinks she knows what she wants but this can only lead to regret, and I don't want that between us. I don't want that for her. I take her hand in mine to pull it away and kiss her fingers. Light reaching over from the kitchen touches on us and I see that her knuckles have lost their purpled colour from our fight. She closes her eyes, both terrified and desperate for what might come next. I'm unsettled to feel a shiver of anticipation pass through her. Her fingers curl around mine and her other hand runs from my lower back up to behind my neck. My instincts kick in, sensing dangerous territory, and I make myself step away. She opens her eyes. It's shadowy without the bedroom light on but I can read the disappointment in them.

"I won't be far away," I promise. "Good night."

"Why do you do that?" she asks quietly. She doesn't seem so tired now. " _How_ can you do that?"

"Do what?" I am confused, but I sense I've done something wrong. Again.

"Pull me in and then drop me. I don't understand what you want from me." She stares at me and must know from my silence that I don't understand, either. "You encourage me to give it a shot and then you shoot me down when I do."

"I don't encourage anything!" I protest. "I've never said anything about it."

I don't expect that we need to discuss what 'it' is but Deb seems to think otherwise. She dissects our escalating mess of a relationship into fine pieces.

"All day we're texting. When we're together it's loaded looks and weird fucking metaphors about food and maybe I'm reading too much into it but it _sounds_ like you're trying to tell me you love me-"

"I _do_ love you. And those are your weird metaphors, not mine."

"-and you know how I feel about you and I'm looking for signs you feel the same," Deb continues, volume escalating as her emotions take the wheel. I try to shush her. "I don't know what I'm reading wrong. There's you holding my hand and stroking my hair and whispering in my ear and begging me not to leave you and throwing Elway out of my house, and all this hugging and holding and saying nice things about wanting to look after me and be good to me, and calling out to me in your sleep." She pauses for a shaky breath, eyes deep with confusion and pain. "When you look at me it's like I'm the only thing you see. When you're on the edge and losing yourself you call _me_ instead of your girlfriend. When _I_ lose it you know how to talk me back. We dream about losing each other. We fight like lovers. Everything we talk about is all 'we' and 'us'. You put your arm around me at that florist and let that woman think we were a couple. You don't think that's weird for a brother and sister? You don't think I'd wonder about that?" She runs her hands agitatedly through her hair, losing control. I want to hold her hands still. "Fuck. Whatever this is, it's constant. You watch me at work, you eat my food instead of Hannah's, you wait up for me, you let me beat you up... You hold me while I cry... You carry me in from the beach..." Her volume drops and her voice shakes. "You put me down on the bed, clean my face. You slept beside me all night. You're near me all the time. I don't know, Dexter – what I am I supposed to read from all that?"

I am silent. Separately, my actions have been purely platonic, but put like that, altogether, I can see how she feels that I've been encouraging her behaviour. I am giving off too many affectionate signals in a row. Like before; after the hug I should have stopped. I shouldn't have played with her hair, even if I meant nothing by it. I shouldn't have kissed her fingers. In my mind that weirdness began when she touched my face but now I see _I_ was the one who started it, the one who issued the invitation, and I shouldn't have let it escalate. I am disappointed with myself. Not just for tonight, but for all the other occasions Deb has brought to my attention. I thought I was doing right, being a good brother, but I never considered how my damaged little sister would perceive it. I should have known. I knew she had these feelings. I should have known she would be looking for signals that it was alright to proceed. Unwittingly, apparently, I have been sending them to her all along.

I just keep hurting her.

"Deb," I manage after a long pause, "I'm sorry. I never meant to confuse you. I never meant for you to think I wanted anything from you except what I already take."

"And then you drop me," Deb narrates, a painful smile colouring her words. "Just when you've got me close and I think, this is it, he wants me this time, you switch off. You let go. You step away. And I'm back at square one, wondering what the fuck is going on." She relents briefly. "Except Tuesday, outside by the road. That was me. I got scared."

"You should be scared," I insist. "It scares me, too. Shit." I don't want to talk about this, but she's smashed the issue wide open and there's no saving either of us from the embarrassment, hurt and weirdness that is sure to ensue. What happened to that beautiful moment in front of the computer, my darling sister snuggled innocently against my side? "What you're trying to read from our interactions isn't there. What you think you feel probably isn't, either. And if it is," I add quickly, seeing her face crumple with hurt at my tactlessness, "then what you're trying to push for is a big fucking deal. You think _I'm_ bad for making massive life-changing decisions on the spur of a heated moment without thinking through all the consequences for you and me?" I'm referring to the Argentina fiasco and she knows it fits this situation, too.

"You _don't_ think," she snaps. She works hard to keep her voice low. "Meanwhile I've been thinking about this for a fucking year."

"Deb, I'm your brother."

"I've thrown myself at worse, trust me."

"Debra," I say, and proceed slowly, "what you're asking me for... I really don't think you've thought it through. It's not something that can be undone, unsaid. I don't know if it's something we can come back from. I love you – I love you more than I love being alive." I wait a few seconds to watch in her eyes as this sinks in. I see her struggle with it. She wants it to mean so much, and here I am, offering it freely but also telling her no, I don't want you, all the rest is off-limits. "I love you so much and I don't want to lose you. What if we do this, and we don't survive it? It could tear us apart forever. I couldn't live with that. Think, Deb. What happens if we try something and we don't like it? Just forget?"

"Would you hate me?" Deb's voice is small. She wraps herself in her own arms. I shake my head.

"I don't think I ever could. But you might hate me. How could you forgive me if I let you do this?"

"What if we _did_ like it?"

"Exactly, then what?" I counter, feeling steadily more hopeless. We are so terribly screwed up. How did we get to this? A serial killer trying to fend off his baby sister's unwanted romantic advances? A victim begging her predator for more punishment? "Even if I _did_ want to go down this path with you, I wouldn't. It's wrong – I don't deserve you, and you definitely don't deserve me. We can never be together the way you seem to want. You can say no one else matters but that isn't true for either of us. Think of work. Think of Harrison." I don't mention Hannah, or even Quinn. They are both implied. I sigh. She is very still but I can see the tears running down her cheeks. I'm compelled to step closer and hold her, even just touch her, but I know I can't. I have done enough damage with my confusing, mixed messages. I rub my face to keep my hands busy. "You are my sister. I love you. I love _us_ , even with all the fucked-up shit that goes with that. I don't want anything to change."

My sister doesn't bother to brush away her tears. She lets them run. After a moment she says, in a voice that keeps cracking, "I love you, too. But something needs to change. What we're doing right now hurts too much. It's killing me." She shudders and exhales shakily. " _You're_ killing me."

I feel something break inside me. I am crushed. It's one of the worst things she could ever have said to me. I've been wondering whether she's capable of breaking me as I do to her, and she's finally answered that question. She can. And she has.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. Or even any merchandise from the franchise, though I intend to fix this.

The conversation ends as Deb turns away to switch on her bedside lamp; I take the dismissal and leave, closing her bedroom door behind me. I can hardly believe we just had that conversation. I feel numb. I feel hopeless. I feel... shattered. I'm killing my sister. I'm not just hurting her and draining her anymore. I am _killing_ her. My head is filled with the image of her big sad eyes as I break her heart, again. Would it make her feel any better to know she's just done the same back to me? I doubt it. I wish the conversation had never happened. I wish I didn't know the truth of what I'm doing. I wish she'd gotten angry instead and yelled and screamed and stamped her feet so I could yell back at her, and then afterwards as the tension defused I could have held her close while she came down from her flighty emotions and I could have apologised and everything would have reset. Ready for another cycle.

The cycle isn't working the way it used to, I realise as I turn off the lights and lock all the doors. Deb isn't playing along. She is trying to change the rules. It scares me. Is she changing things because she herself is changed? Because she is... dying? I have broken her and put her back together so many times – maybe each time I am making microscopic mistakes and maybe she's been changing little by little all year and the sister I knew is gone forever? If she says I am killing her, then maybe soon she'll be gone altogether. I don't like change – I _don't_ change – but Deb is changing everything. She is different and is trying to make our relationship different. I don't want different but I don't want to be without her, either.

I open my right hand and look at the jagged red line where Vogel's teacup sliced it open. The wound is closed but it is still inflamed and I know it will scar horribly. The burn on my leg amounted to nothing much, and the bruises on my face are all but gone. My split eyebrow has healed neatly. I think of my beautiful, miserable sister as she helped me to treat all of these wounds. I am as bad as our father, letting her clean up after me and my mistakes. I shouldn't blame her for this most recent mess. It's _my_ fault. As she pointed out, I have been encouraging it. I have made a mess of us and of her, and then left her to pick up the confused and mixed up pieces and expected that she would know how to make sense of them.

Debra has always equated love with sex. Her lovelife has been a train wreck and her deepest emotional connections are all the same – they start platonic yet charged, even wrought with friction, and then she throws herself at the other person and they have sex, and a romance blossoms from there. I think of Lundy, Quinn, Antoine, even Rudy Cooper, Brian. She has never experienced a love affair that didn't start with sex. She is reading the signs from me – the fighting, the neediness, the frustrations, the sweetness – and as far as she is concerned, the only way to get from here to where she wants to be – secure, loved, wanted – is for us to sleep together and give ourselves to each other physically. She thinks this is how you give your heart to someone. I can see her logic, even if I am uncomfortable with it.

I am different from Deb. For me, love comes from familiarity. Connection comes from slowly opening up and letting someone further into my psyche. I don't need sex to find love, or even to define it, although I have learned to enjoy it and use it as a means of human connection and emotional release. It isn't necessary, though, and it certainly isn't needed here. _But what if we like it_? Deb asked. We do both enjoy sex. We do both enjoy each other. We do love each other. Is it possible that we could follow this path and _not_ regret it?

 _No_. I am furious with myself for even asking. I dig my fingernails into my palm, aggravating the wound. It burns with pain but I make myself feel it. I deserve it. I deserve worse. I dig deeper, trying to reopen the split skin. Deb already has my heart. How can she not know that? Have I not made that clear? Have I not said it? I exhale slowly, depressed and hurting, and reopen my fingers. She's my whole world and I don't know how to make her see that the love she already gives me is enough, is all I can justify taking from her. She thinks she wants something from me, when in fact she's trying to have me take something away from her.

Worse is that I've been _making_ her think this way. I am a terrible brother. I am a terrible person. I am killing my sister with my empty affection and useless love. Starving her; suffocating her. Just the thought of it almost suffocates _me_. I take measured breaths, trying to keep a grip. I feel out of control, like I do when I am desperate to complete a kill – except it's the opposite, because I am already partway through one and I just want to be able to rewind and take back all the damage I've done.

 _You're killing me_. My very being is splintered by Deb's words. I told her I never would, never could, but I am anyway. My insides feel twisted. She is in so much pain, all because of me; when she hurts I hurt, too. Is it possible that she can be broken so badly that nothing can put her back together? Can she lose her ability to love – to love _me_? Can she really be taken from me? Yes, of course; it's naive to think otherwise. What happens to me if she dies? Do I stop existing? I am only me because of her. If I destroy her completely then who is left to believe in Dexter Morgan?

I squeeze my eyes shut and let my forehead fall with a thump against the glass door. I hate being me. Even now, while my little sister is falling apart, I am thinking about the effect of her pain on _myself_. She's right, I'm so selfish. Harry Morgan made an epic mistake bringing me home that day. He should have left me in the blood with my brother. Brian and I were made into monsters in that storage container. We grew up to be destroyers and killers. We deserve each other. But Harry's daughter never deserved any of this. Whether I'm trying to be good or bad to her, it doesn't matter. I just keep hurting her.

Meanwhile, I am hurting someone else. Hannah, my girlfriend, has chosen me, and has chosen to stay in Miami to be with me. Despite the risks, despite being hunted, she is here, and has allowed herself to be locked up in Debra's house, waiting on me and relying on me to smuggle her out of the country and into a future I keep promising her. I'm forcing her to sit and watch while I deliberate where I stand with Deb and getting mad with her when she asks me for assurance. Does she see my behaviour towards my sister in the same way that Deb does? Is it that obvious to the world that my sister is in love with me and that I'm a freaking idiot? Is this why she's so insecure? It's my fault she's here – I'm the one who had her arrested, who pitted Hannah and Deb against each other in the first place, who drove Hannah to the lengths she's now gone to in order to survive. I took Hannah's options away. I am doing wrong by everyone, I realise. I should have let Hannah leave on that plane. I shouldn't have asked her to stay. I've just complicated everything.

I sit on the sofa and watch Deb's door. Underneath, there is a strip of light from inside. I watch as her shadow passes several times as she gets ready for bed. What is going through her head? What is she thinking? Is she still crying? I don't hear anything. She switches her light off and my world goes dark. It's always darker without her.

I try to sleep. It's hours of painful silence in the dark before I manage to. I dream.

I'm in the storage container, but not alone. I'm with Hannah, and we're making love on my kill table, like the first time. She is looking at me with lust-filled blue eyes. We move rhythmically against each other and I close my eyes as the pleasure builds. She breathes my name heavily. Her voice doesn't sound right. I open my eyes, driving deep.

She arches back with a moan but she isn't Hannah anymore. She's too thin, too long to be Hannah. I freeze up, knowing even before she falls back and looks up that this is Deb. I am fucking my sister. Even after I said I wouldn't. Her breaths are heavy and satisfying and come in short puffs through her typically slightly open mouth. Her dark hair is damp at the roots and the rest is splayed around her head, ends sticking to her cheeks. Her skin is dotted with sweat and her long limbs wind around mine as she tries to push for more. I am frozen. I don't know what to do. It's done, clearly.

"Don't do this," she begs, running hands through my hair and pulling my face down to hers. She breathes hard into my mouth, her lips brushing mine and driving us both crazy. "Don't start down this path again and then pull away. It's too late, Dex. Stay."

She kisses me and I let her. It's hardly a big deal considering what the rest of our bodies are doing. I stroke her messy hair away from her damp, flushed face.

"I don't ever want to lose you," I admit. Does she still not understand? What we're doing, this could put a wall between us that we might never be able to pull back down. She kisses my nose, a moment of sweetness, and then pulls my head down to her neck, her fingers still weaving through my hair. My mouth meets her skin and my lips part automatically. I kiss her collarbone. She tastes like salt. Without thinking I trace my tongue up higher, opening my mouth wider, kissing and tasting. She makes a soft, sighing sound and raises her hips to mine. I close my eyes tightly in response to the incredible sensation of sinking deeper into her. It feels _good_ but it shouldn't. She turns her head and I feel her breath in my ear.

"You're never going to lose me, Dexter," she whispers. Her chest heaves against mine as she tightens her stomach muscles and rocks her hips back and forth. I bury my face in her neck and try to contain the indecent moans that escape me. I don't want her to know how she's making me feel. I don't want to encourage anything, though it's a little late for that. She tries to soothe me. "It's alright. I'm here. I love you," she reminds me, shifting slightly under me so she can turn her head enough to look me in the eyes. I'm sure she sees my desire and terror there. "I told you, this is what I want."

"You have no idea... what you want," I tell her, my words undermined by the primal grunt that interrupts me, coinciding with an upward thrust of hers. It's too much. "Deb, stop it." Her lip twitches into her usual charming half-smirk. I can't believe she's doing this, or that I'm reacting physically the way I am. I reach down between us to grasp her bony hip and push to keep her down. She frowns when she realises what I'm doing and keeps trying, muscles tensing as she strains upwards against my hold. She runs her hands from my head down my back; I know what she's planning. I have no hands left, with one pinning her down and the other holding my weight up off her, and try to use my elbows to knock her hands away. "Please, Deb, don't." She ignores me and when her hands are on my lower back she pulls me down and back into her. I shudder at the sensation, upset and excited at the same time. I don't know what to think.

"You never think," Deb murmurs, reading my mind. She works hard to pull me against her rhythmically, fighting my tenseness. "What difference does it make what you think now?" She strains against my hold and I tighten my grip on her. I close my eyes and press my forehead into the metal surface of the table. This is crazy, this is wrong, this feels amazing. The breath from inside her is hot and fast in my ear, and when she speaks again, her lips brush my earlobe. I shiver in response. "I belong to you. I'll never leave you. Are you going to leave me?"

I open my eyes and stare hard at the metal at the end of my nose. Leave her? How could I ever leave her? I slide my head closer to her so I can press my cheek against hers. She moves one hand back up to stroke my hair.

"You started this," she informs me softly. I glare at the table, hating that she is right. "You pull me so fucking close and then drop me. The fall feels further each time." She pauses in her relentless seduction. She quits the upward pressure; her arms wrap around me in an embrace that feels the closest to normal I have felt since this started. She plays her best card. "Please don't drop me. It kills me when you do."

I blink at the tabletop. Way to pull the rug out from under my feet, Deb. My body demands that we keep going but I have the self control to think first. Barely. There is no choice, after all. I lift my head from beside hers to kiss her delicately on her lips. She watches me the whole time, waiting. I'm not sure what for. I don't need to tell her what she means to me. I don't need to say, of course I won't drop you, I love you, I'm yours for always. I pull her up from the cold metal table so I can slide my arm behind her and hold her close. My hand on her hip tightens and I use it to pull her in instead of pushing her away. She winds her legs around mine, our mouths meet and the sex begins anew.

It's quick. It's hot. It's noisy. Soon enough I'm done and so is she, and she's shaking in my arms and I collapse on top of her. Distantly I know this is only a dream but the sensations are incredible, so real. I feel my sister trembling and sucking in oxygen beneath me.

I am hit with a gutful of guilt and regret. This is _my sister_. I told Hannah I wouldn't. I told Deb I wouldn't. I told _myself_ I wouldn't. And now I have. I push myself upwards and off of her and stumble from the kill table. I lean against it, eyes shut tightly, breathing hard. What have I done?

"I'm so sorry," I whisper through unexpected tears.

I expect Deb to reach out to me, to touch me or to say something. She is quiet. Suddenly she makes a surprised, muffled sound and jerks violently. One of her knees catches me in the back. I turn quickly. Brian has come, and has his hands over Deb's mouth and nose. She is struggling, striking out with her arms and legs. He seems unaffected and holds tight.

"What are you doing?" I demand. I glare at him across the table. "She's mine, not yours."

"She's both of ours," Brian insists. "Did you enjoy her? I did. Poor, dear, desperate Debra. You know as well as I do that you're going to destroy her sooner or later." He smiles down at her as she fights fruitlessly. He almost looks affectionate for a moment. "It's better for everyone if I do it for you. I don't want to see you hurting, little brother. Just... let go. Watch."

I watch as the fight seeps out of my sister. My brother, my own darkness, is slowly suffocating her. Less and less she is able to strike back, though she keeps trying. Beneath her skin, her toned muscles strain and work to move her body into a more favourable position. Her fingernails draw blood from his arms as she scratches at him. Her stifled screams die quickly as her lungs burn for air. Her legs slide about on the metal table, made slippery from our sweat, unable to get a good foothold with which to leverage her weight against Brian's hold. Her motions lose their power. Kicks become spasms. Measured strikes become slaps, which in turn become little more than desperate taps. Her spine, tensely arched, lowers back down to the table. Her foot slides off the table and hangs there.

I realise I am watching my sister die and I finally react. I throw myself into Brian's side and shove him away. His hands come away from Deb's face and she gasps. I drive my brother as far away as I can, smashing him into the wall of the container.

"You'll kill her eventually," he snarls at me. "Grow a pair and accept it, Dexter. Or just let me do it."

"I'll never do it," I argue. "I'll never let you do it, either. I've hurt her but whatever you say, whatever she says, I'm going to find a way to fix it."

"You're a fucking idiot," he mocks, "thinking you can salvage something from the mess you've made. You're living a fluffy little dream, Dexter." He pushes against me but I shove back, holding him by the front of his shirt.

"I'm not letting you hurt her," I say threateningly. He laughs in my face.

"Not letting me? I'm _you_. Think you can stop _yourself_ from doing what you _always_ do? And you're not thinking very creatively. You and I, we're one and the same – Dexter and his Darkness – and we don't need a knife and a table to take someone's life away." He juts his chin in Deb's direction, prompting me to look over. I'm not sure I want to. "Have a look. It doesn't need to be your knife to be your fault."

I finally give in and look over. I drop Brian in horror. Deb is surrounded. Elway is kneeling over her and has a gun to her heart, and whispers bitter, twisted things into her ear. Vogel has a hand on Deb's throat and another in Deb's mouth, forcing her jaw open. Hannah is pouring poison inside. Deputy Marshal Clayton is pinning Deb's arms together, cuffing them to the underside of the table. Saxon has his arm looped around Deb's legs, locking them together uselessly, and in his other hand is his power saw, switched off for now but with its little red stand-by light flashing.

Any of them can end her in a second. Ending her will end me. She pulls against their holds but she's stuck. I start forward. Brian catches my wrist. He takes my shoulders gently and turns me to face the wall. He leans his head against mine.

"You don't want to see this," he says knowingly, and holds me as Deb makes desperate, voiceless sounds in her blocked throat, as she chokes and sputters on the poison, as the gun goes off, and as the power saw starts. I squeeze my eyes shut and Brian's grip on me tightens. "It doesn't have to be like this. You can do it. You can let her go, so no one can ever hurt her again. Not them; not you; not even herself. You and I, we would be gentle." He squeezes my shoulder supportively. "She would let you."

I snap awake and sit up. My head swims and my stomach roils with the nightmarish visions and sounds of my dream. I jump to my feet, run to the door and unlock it with fumbling fingers as my stomach begins to eject its contents. I swallow it down once, giving me enough time to wrench open the door and run out onto the sand. I collapse onto my hands and knees. I am violently sick. Last night's yoghurt comes up, along with the beer and whatever it was I ate for dinner. Once it is all out I continue to retch. Afterwards I am shaking and sweating like we were in the dream. I crawl away from my disgusting mess and lie down several metres away. It is so early. The sun isn't even up yet, but the yellowish tinge to the grey of the eastern horizon tells me it is thinking about it.

I must have some incredibly deep issues to resolve because each night these dreams are becoming worse. What started off as dreaming of finding Deb dead and gone (a reasonable fear, considering our circumstances) has evolved into nightmares about my own darkness seducing her and consuming her. She is right. I _am_ killing her. Every night in my sleep. During the day I am unwittingly channelling Brian, the brother who drew Deb in with playful, loving behaviour until she fell hard for him, giving her a glimpse of a future she likes and then tearing it all away like pulling a curtain from a window and blinding someone with a flash of the harsh sunlight on the other side.

I dreamed about having sex with Debra. I don't even know how to feel about that. It's not real but it felt like it was. I recall every sensation vividly. I both enjoyed it and hated it. I try to tell myself it only came up in my subconscious because of our super-awkward conversation immediately before bed and that I would never have thought it up on my own. I tell myself it doesn't mean anything because it was just a dream and I would never choose to do it in waking reality. I would tell her no. I would let her down carefully. But I had a choice, even though in the dream I felt I didn't, and I made one that I said I never would. I stare at the grey above me and my eyes sting with unanticipated tears. I begin to understand why she's been such a disaster about all of this. It's confusing. It's hard. It's painful.

In short, it's absolutely fucked.

Even more painful is the dream's message. I have made a lot of poor choices in my time, and it seems that my subconscious is quite aware of how close I have allowed some very dangerous people to get to Deb. I am not as clever a chess master as I thought. Over the years I have lost good pieces – bishops, rooks, knights; Harry, Rita, Lumen – but I must have thought, as long as I have my queen, I can still win this. Meanwhile I have turned my attention away from her, thinking that a powerful piece like her will hold her own, and focussed exclusively on pawns. My relationship with Hannah. My urge to kill. My history with Vogel. Small game. My queen is being threatened and I am moving all the wrong pieces while I, the red knight, sit perfectly in position to defend her.

More than anything right now, I want to pick myself up from the beach, go back inside and curl up on Deb's bed beside her. I want to hear her slow breathing. I want to watch her chest rise and fall over and over again. I want to feel her warmth against me and to feel her immense gravity pull me back together. I want to use her. But I make myself stay where I am. I have no right. I have done enough damage. After what was said a few hours ago, I can't let her wake to find me wrapped around her, breathing her in. It would only confuse matters, make things worse. I close my eyes and concentrate on what she must look like right now: head on the pillow, hair soft and spread like a dark halo, blanket strewn roughly across her body, face smooth and relaxed in dreamless sleep, hands open. I remind myself that she is not far away. Metres. On the other side of a wall. This will have to do. I slowly begin to feel her proximity and work to centre myself.

I lie there until the compulsion to run to my sister's side has passed and I am ready to go about my morning as though I was not woken by terrifying dreams about sex with my sibling and her resultant ghastly murder. I still feel very far from okay but I am holding myself together. The sun is still not up but by now it is very close. I see the corona peeping over the edge of the Earth. I kick a pile of sand over my vomit. I go inside. Harrison is up, packing his schoolbag.

"I'm hungry, Daddy," he complains. "Can I have breakfast now?"

"Soon, buddy," I say, trying not to sound as tired as I am. I go for a shower and try to wash my self-disgust away. I rinse my mouth and brush my teeth. I wash the sand and dried sweat out of my hair, rejecting images of my sister's fingers running along my scalp instead. When I am dry and dressed, I look at myself in the mirror. I look normal. I don't feel normal.

Knowing I can do nothing right now to fix things with Deb, I decide to try to fix things with Hannah. I find her asleep in the spare room. I sit on the edge of the bed and look at her as she stirs. She is very pretty, golden blonde like I have always liked them best. I have really loved Hannah. She has accepted me for all that I am. No one else who has ever loved me has done this much. Harry learned to live with what he'd brought home from that crime scene and tried to channel me; Rita accepted everything about me that she liked and overlooked the rest; Brian was willing to take me as I was, but minus Deb; Lila accepted what I was but wanted only my darkness; Lumen needed my darkness so she could escape her own, and couldn't live with it once she had; Harrison loves what he knows of me. Even Deb, my other half, has tried relentlessly to change me, to little avail.

But I have done wrong by Hannah. Like Jamie with Quinn, Hannah deserves better than what I am giving. She shouldn't have to hear 'I love you' and see 'I don't'. No one should.

Hannah wakes and smiles uncertainly at me.

"Dexter? What time is it?"

"Very early," I tell her quietly. She blinks and tries to sit up, worried. I gently hold her down. I avoid thinking of Hannah and all my other enemies holding Deb down, much less gently, and of Hannah pouring poison into my sister's mouth, drowning her. "It's alright, nothing's wrong. I just... wanted to see you." It's only a little lie. I would rather have sat beside Deb as she woke, but I can't say that. "I wanted to say it's Monday, and in a week from now I'm going to kill Vogel and Saxon, plant your DNA and evacuate you from the country. No one is ever going to hunt you again, or try to hurt you. You'll be safe, and happy."

"And after a while," she says, taking my hand lightly, "you'll come and join me?"

"Absolutely." But I'm not sure anymore. I don't know what I want. I lie beside Hannah and try to use her like she asked me to. She wants to be my Deb. I close my eyes and breathe, listening to her do the same. She falls back into a doze. I stay like this until the sun is well and truly up. I try to absorb her energy and to draw goodness and rightness from her, to feel better just by being near her. I try, I honestly do. But it isn't what I want. It isn't what I need. My soul is in pieces and this glue isn't strong enough. Maybe Hannah's not as righteous as my sister; I don't know. Whatever magic Deb has inside her that I feed off, to her detriment, Hannah doesn't have it. My heart stays broken.

When she wakes again, I smile at her. "Breakfast?"

"Definitely," she smiles back. We hear the pipes creak as the hot water begins to run. Deb is awake and taking her shower. "How do breakfast sausages, tomatoes and toast sound?"

We go out into the living area with our hands clasped together. It's nice; sweet. A far cry from the content of my dreams, anyway. Harrison is in the kitchen, fridge door open and head stuck inside. I'd forgotten about him. Great, Dad. Hannah's hand slips from mine as I go to check on my son and Hannah goes to tidy the cushions on the sofa from my restless sleep. Her fingers cling to my fingertips as she stretches back to keep the contact as long as possible. She says, "I took the sausages out of the freezer last night and put them in the fridge door to defrost. Grab them out? And there's tomatoes down the bottom."

I pull the door of the refrigerator open and Harrison jumps, caught out. He looks up at me guiltily. Chocolate is smeared across his mouth and the spoon in his hand is digging out a third or fourth helping of Deb's mousse.

"Oh, buddy," I say, cringing. "Your Aunt Deb loves you but this might be pushing it."

"I only ate a little bit!" Harrison says worriedly, showing me. "I was just so hungry. I thought she might not notice if it was just a little bit." He sniffs as tears of shame well in his eyes. "She's going to be so mad at me."

He looks down, obviously feeling bad. Hannah comes over, curious.

"What's the matter, little man?" she asks kindly. Tearfully, he turns to her and shows her the evidence of his betrayal. Hannah's gentle expression immediately hardens. "Harrison – what are you doing with that?" She steps forward, brushing past me, and snatches the dessert from my son. "That's your aunt's. You heard her; she said no one else was allowed it." She tosses the tub into the rubbish bin and pulls the foil lid from Harrison's hand to throw that away, too. She finds a dishcloth and crouches before Harrison to wipe his face and then his hands. "Why didn't you listen, Harrison?"

"I'm sorry," he says, very sadly. "I wasn't thinking." Hmm, must be a Morgan guy thing.

"I'll buy her another one, and she'll get over it," I assure Hannah, who seems immeasurably worried about Deb's wrath. I'm not worried. I have enough to worry about when it comes to my sister. This chocolate mousse situation is one I can fix. I am not certain about all the other issues I've raised between us, but I know I will do whatever it takes to fix them, too. I grab out the sausages and tomatoes, both exactly where Hannah said they would be.

"Let's just not tell her, hmm?" Hannah suggests to Harrison, not really to me. My son looks doubtful.

"Lie to Aunt Deb?" he asks. His gaze shifts to me uncertainly. "Or a surprise? That's like a nice secret," he explains to my girlfriend.

"It'll be a surprise when your daddy puts new ones in the fridge and she finds them," Hannah says with a quick smile. She puts the spoon and cloth into the sink. She goes back to Harrison and fusses over him, brushing his hair off his forehead and straightening his clothes. "How about some water for you, little man? I'll put a little slice of lime in it."

"Sometimes Aunt Deb puts limes in her beer," Harrison says brightly. He scoots off to sit at the table. Hannah stands and tries to smile after him. I can tell she's still worried.

"FYI," I say, "when Deb says, 'don't let me catch any of you eating this', she doesn't mean she'll behead anyone she finds with traces of chocolate on their fingers. She's really not as mean as you make her out to be." I choose a knife and begin to slice the tomatoes. The tough skin of the fruit gives and the juice spills out. I force away visions of my knife doing the same to my sister's stomach. "Plus, to be honest, she was probably going to give that thing to him in the end anyway."

"Yeah, well," Hannah says, washing the spoon clean and returning it to the drawer. "Chocolate mousse really isn't an ideal breakfast for a little boy on a school day, is it?"

I can't argue with that. We cook the sausages in a pan and add the tomatoes. Deb spends ages in her room. I hear the hairdryer. I assume she has washed her hair and is straightening it. When she comes out I feel the _click_ inside me as, straightaway, my world starts to put itself back together. Then I recall that she's the reason it's in pieces, and that inside, _she's_ in pieces, too. Because of me. I feel awful once again.

She meets my gaze immediately. She's right, it's loaded. I see the challenge there – she's rested, stronger, ready to go again. I can't help my mind flashing on my very explicit dream; her writhing nakedness, her hair damp with sweat, her mouth whispering into my ear, her fingers on my skin and mine on hers. Her back arched and long legs flailing uselessly as my darkness suffocates her. The fight draining out of her and her foot hanging limp from the edge of the table. The sound of her choked screams for help and of the power saw. I feel ill and quickly pour myself some water. I skull it all. I wonder what Deb's thinking, if it's anywhere near as traumatic as what I am thinking. She is greeted by Harrison, who overcompensates for his earlier act of treachery by acting extremely cheerful.

"Good morning, Aunt Deb! Look what Hannah made me! It's water, with some lime. It's like when you have a beer, and you put a lime in the bottle." He holds up the glass. Deb comes over to him to look obediently. "It's yum. Do you want to try some? I don't mind."

"Sure," Deb agrees, and takes a mouthful from the other side of the glass. "Mm, you're right. That is good." She hands it back and comes to stand at the counter and to look at what Hannah and I are making. I quickly prepare a plate and hand it to her with a brief smile, trying to act normal. Like I didn't dream about fucking her and letting a room full of people kill her. Like I didn't break her heart last night. Like she didn't break mine. She seems to be pretending the same things. She accepts the plate dubiously and asks, "Which bit's poisoned?"

"I oversaw every stage of the breakfast-making operation," I assure her. I get a knife and fork for her. "Poison-free, guaranteed." Our relationship, not so.

"You'll drink water I prepared but not my food?" Hannah asks with a forced smile. Deb smiles in the same way in return.

"I like to think you'd never try to poison my nephew," she answers. She takes her breakfast away. "I just don't feel the fucking same about you and me."

Deb goes to the couch and turns on the television. Harrison takes his water and cereal over to join her. Hannah gives me a long-suffering look.

"Two more days," she recites quietly. "Two more days. I can last two more days of her. Then I never have to see her again, right?"

Deb and I don't talk all morning. She grabs her keys and meets my eyes as a signal that she's ready to go, so I usher Harrison out the door after her and go back to grab my phone. During the night I've had plenty of calls from Vogel but I don't feel compelled to call her back. Hannah catches me for a quick kiss.

"Have a good day," she encourages, and I leave with my son and sister. I'm not sure I can do as Hannah has asked. How can I have a good day after the way it started?

We drop Harrison off at school. He quietly hops out of the car and goes without even saying goodbye. I'm not sure what is wrong with him. He was happy and cheerful at home. Deb watches him until he reaches the classroom door, then backs the car out of the car park and heads to the station. I decide to broach our issues.

"Deb-"

"Shut up. I'm not fucking talking to you." Her tone is firm enough to make it clear that she means it, and so we drive all the way in complete silence. When we arrive at work I try again, making the mistake of placing my hand over hers on the park brake to get her attention. She freezes and looks pointedly at our hands. I realise suddenly that I'm doing it again. I whip my hand away, silently berating myself. I open my mouth to start apologising but she cuts me off before I even get through my two-word sentence. "Don't start, asshole. I don't want to hear it. I don't want to hear anything you've got to say, ever. Just fuck right off, alright? You'll just make everything worse, like you always do."

She gets out of the car. _You'll just make everything worse._ I sit for another second _. I don't want to hear it._ I feel so completely alone, and not in a good way. I'm still in pieces over last night's revelations and the only person who can help me fix it – who can _let_ me fix it – doesn't want me anywhere near her. _I'm not talking to you_. I don't doubt I deserve it but I wish I were someone who didn't.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. Nor do I own or get any kickbacks for endorsing products such as BMW or Biro.
> 
> Author's notes: The Dexter Wiki puts Dexter and Debra's ages as eight years apart (according to their birth years of '71 and '79), which may be correct for the novels but isn't consistent with the show, which is the universe in which I am writing. In the childhood flashbacks in the show the siblings are portrayed by children of very near ages, roughly two-three years apart, and so for the purposes of my story, for anyone who cares about this sort of thing, I have placed them three years apart in age.

The morning begins with a briefing on last night's failed hunt for Oliver Saxon. My colleagues don't know that he's really Daniel Vogel or that he's a deranged serial killer. They just think he's involved in the murder of my neighbour and they want to further question him, but he seems to have suspiciously skipped town. Angel moves on to discuss the lack of progress on the search for Zach Hamilton, the original suspect for that kill who Matthews insisted we lay off. Vince Masuka, sitting beside me in the back row, leans close to speak to me.

"So: what did you do this time?" he asks with immense interest. I glance at him in confusion. Masuka is generally on a totally different wavelength from anyone else, so it is worth clarifying with him what he means before embarking on a conversation. Grinning, he angles his gaze obviously towards the front. I take his meaning immediately. Deb is standing with Batista, helping to deliver the briefing. Although she is now 'just' a detective, she used to be lieutenant and Angel is so glad to have her back that I think he is treating her as an equal rather than as an underling. As I look at her, she casts me a resentful look. She wraps an arm over her chest and holds her opposite shoulder. Masuka waits for her to look away before nudging me and saying, "Alright, let me guess." He folds his arms and observes Debra critically. "She's pissed – self-evident. But that vulnerable, self-conscious posture both hides and draws attention to her chest, very luscious in that outfit, by the way, and those sultry, sexy, angry, fiery eyes-"

"This is my sister you're talking about, Vince," I remind him in a low voice. It doesn't put him off in the slightest. It encourages him.

"Ha! I knew it. You saw her naked, didn't you?"

I glare at him in surprise, wondering how the perverted forensic technician could be so close. I guess his mind goes places others don't, and only a mind so open could go where Deb and I have been lately.

"No," I insist, my eyes flickering up at my sister as she takes over from Angel. Masuka laughs his creepy trademark laugh but keeps it low so we aren't called to attention.

"You did. You _dog_." He offers me his hand to high-five. I keep mine in my lap and give him a dangerous look, hoping he will start to realise how totally inappropriate he is being. He lowers his hand and leans closer to me to speak intensely. "You think I can't read the weirdness that passes between seemingly ordinary citizens? I can, Dexmeister, I can." He nods knowingly. I take his word for it.

I am called on by Batista to report on the most recent homicide on the board. I explain to the team what I told Quinn on Saturday. Deb scowls at me the whole time I am speaking. I avoid looking at her. I hate that she hates me so much right now, even if I know I deserve it. Masuka is right, in a way. Last night my sister stripped away all of her emotional walls and barriers and presented herself to me, bare and vulnerable. And I pulled her in. And I dropped her.

And when she fell, she ripped something of me away, too, and took it down with her. When I finish speaking and someone else starts, I chance a look up at Deb. She isn't looking at me anymore. My heart aches. It hardly matters she's so close. I miss her so much.

The briefing finishes and we all stand and filter out. Masuka starts on me afresh as we walk slowly together through the main office.

"Dude, I've got to know," he says. "Was it in the shower? Did you walk in on her on the toilet? Oh, no, I know – she was getting it _on_." He grins like a kid on Christmas morning. "Who was she with? _Please_ say it was another chick."

"I didn't – No, Vince," I manage, rubbing my eyes and trying to contain my disgust, with him _and_ with me. I wish I _had_ walked in on Deb with some stranger; it's happened before, and we got past that awkwardness rather quickly. What has actually happened is much worse, may take much longer to recover.

Colleagues brush past us on their way back to their respective tasks. Masuka catches my arm and leans conspiratorially close. "Alright, so no chick, no rampant sex. It was the shower, wasn't it? Details, bro, details! Fill in the blanks for me here." His gaze takes on a dreamy, faraway look. "Steam on the shower screen, but not enough to block a glorious view of _everything_ ; water running down over amazing breasts and then two screams of shock, and she grabs for a towel but nothing's big enough to hide-"

"Would it help if I put my hand down your pants?" Deb interrupts scathingly, startling us both. Vince is shaken loose of his gripping daydream. "No? How about my foot, up your _ass_?" She turns her glare on me. "What the fuck did you tell him?"

"Nothing!" I object. Masuka looks between us, still apparently unaware of how troublesome he's being.

"Listen, Deb," he says supportively, "it's alright. We're all friends and family here." He gestures between the three of us. "There's no need to get defensive. These things happen. Probably more often than you realise. We can talk about this kind of thing like grown-ups."

" _What_ kind of thing?" Deb demands, both angry and mystified. Masuka looks surprised.

"Uh... Dexter, seeing you naked," he supplies helpfully. I look down, cringing. Deb is momentarily lost for words. Masuka mistakes her shocked silence. "Or did you see _him_ naked?" He screws his nose up at me, finally grossed out. When I only look up at him awkwardly, wishing he'd stop and go away, his eyes brighten with sudden understanding. "No way – you were _both_ naked? How do you even manage that? Timing alone would be-"

"No one was naked," I interject. Vince frowns; this doesn't compute. Deb recovers from her shock.

"Fucking seriously, Masuka," she says, annoyed, "you really do know how to make a conversation freaking weird, don't you? Get the fuck out of my way," she adds, shoving between us to get to her desk. She drops the folders she carried out of the briefing room onto the desktop and glares up at the forensics chief. "Sometimes I wonder what it must look like inside your head. A bunch of sick fucking cartoon rabbits all fucking each other and getting high and turning all the cogs this way and that to see what creepy-ass scenario they can make come out of your mouth. Fuck. How else could you come up with all this shit?"

Masuka looks mildly hurt. "You were, all, like..." He turns his body to the side and lifts his weight off one leg to simulate a feminine posture, and wraps his arm across his body to demonstrate an exaggerated version of her earlier body language. "And your eyes were, like, hot and steamy." He squints intensely at Deb. She stares at him, uncomprehending but somewhat fascinated, like she always does. My phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out and check the screen. I expect it to be Vogel but it isn't. It's Harrison's school. Deb drags her disturbed gaze from Masuka to glance at what I am doing.

"It's the school," I mention, and answer the phone. The caller identifies herself as the main receptionist at my son's school, and informs me that Harrison has been taken ill and needs to be picked up.

"What's wrong with him?" I ask, wondering whether he's faking it to get out of class. He seems a little young to be doing this but I think on his silent departure this morning. Did he pick up on mine and Deb's tension in the car? Did it upset him? Is this him acting out?

"He complained of a headache and threw up just before school began," the receptionist tells me, "and his teacher sent him straight down to the nurse, but he seemed quite fine after that, very bright-eyed and talkative, so we sent him back. Then he fell asleep on the carpet during show and tell."

I swallow, looking over at my sister worriedly. This is definitely not a ruse of my son's. Show and tell is Harrison's favourite part of the day.

"Your son has vomited twice more since being brought back to the sick bay. He is quite dozy and clammy. I think..." The woman on the phone hesitates on giving out advice that might not be wanted, but charges ahead anyway, motivated to help a sick little boy. "I think he needs to see a doctor, quite quickly. Are you able to come down and get him, Mr Morgan? Or would you like us to call one of his emergency contacts..." I hear the click of fingernails on a keyboard as she checks her computer for Harrison's information. I rub my eyes, exhausted, feeling my control on the world slipping away from me again.

"There's just Debra, my sister. She's with me now, at work." I look around, thinking. "I'll come and pick him up. I'll be there soon."

I hang up, feeling worried. Masuka is still acting and explaining his logical deduction of mine and Deb's illusory nakedness. Deb is watching me and interrupts him with, "What's wrong with Harrison?"

"He's sick. I've got to go and get him."

"We only just dropped him off," Deb argues. "He was fucking fine half an hour ago."

"He's thrown up three times and fallen asleep in the middle of show and tell," I report, and her face falls a little. She knows that isn't good. "I need to take him to a doctor. I'll borrow a car from the motor pool-"

"Fuck that," Deb disagrees, going through her pocket. "It'll take you ten minutes to walk there, fifteen to sign the paperwork, another ten for them to fuck about and find the right key. Take my car." She reaches across the desk and presses them into my hand. I drink in the sensation of her fingers brushing mine, drawing strength, but ensure I don't let the touch linger. No more mixed messages. They seem to be messing with my mind as much as with hers. "Just come back and pick me up later."

"Or I can drop you off home," Masuka offers. Deb and I look at him, dubious. He smiles. "I'm meeting Niki for dinner tonight." Perverted creep Masuka is instantly replaced with doting dad Masuka. It's just as weird.

Deb only deliberates for a moment. "Alright," she accepts. It would seem strange to anyone else, considering the exchange that these two just had, but I know that deep down Deb and Vince have a very special friendship. No man Vince Masuka has ever known has come as close to matching his mind as Debra Morgan does.

"Are you sure?" I check. She shrugs carelessly. I shift the keys in my hand and force a grateful smile. All these little things that she does for me are what make her such an amazing sister. Meanwhile I constantly break her heart and then feel sorry for myself when she finally breaks mine. I don't deserve her. "Thanks, Deb."

"Don't mention it," she says, going through her desk drawer to avoid looking at me. "God, I ordered pens a fucking week ago. You'd think a few fucking biros would be an easy enough ask." She strides between Vince and me once again to go to Quinn's desk. This time, as she slides past me, she makes a deliberate effort not to touch me at all. "How am I meant to get anything done around here without a fucking _pen_?"

I know it's not really the pens that are driving her frustrations ever higher. It's me, my presence, my nearness after all that was said last night. I need to give her some space. I pocket my phone and turn to leave.

"What in the name of fuck is this?"

Masuka and I both turn back to Deb's exclamation of wonderment. She's standing at Quinn's desk with the drawer open and a little square box in her hand. It looks like a ring box. I know immediately what this must be, and I'm both surprised – that anyone would keep such a depressing reminder of a failed relationship in their desk, especially so close to where they work in close proximity with their ex – and not surprised at all, since I've suspected ever since Deb and Joey broke up that he has remained deeply in love with her.

"Is that...?" Masuka asks, amazed, as Deb flicks open the box. She can't speak. Her eyes betray her deep conflicting feelings about this discovery. She doesn't need any further stress on her already delicate state of mind. I look around quickly. No one is paying us any mind, but Quinn is just in the briefing room and could walk in at any moment.

"Deb," I hiss, "put it back." My voice seems to break her out of her reverie and she closes the box. She looks around too, guiltily. I lean aside to see through the glass wall of the briefing room. Quinn and Batista are deep in discussion but are now walking this way. I wave urgently at Deb. "Quick, they're coming!"

She shoves the box back into the drawer, right over the back, and throws it shut. She grabs the stolen box of pens as Quinn comes into sight and smiles at her. She smiles back, quickly, though I'm sure it fools nobody. Luckily Quinn is stuck talking with Angel; glancing at each other meaningfully, Masuka and I turn on our heels and stalk away.

On my way out the front door I block a call from Vogel. I have more important things to worry about right now. She can fuck right off.

I drive Deb's BMW to Harrison's school. I am glad they called me. He is barely conscious by the time I arrive. I am shocked by his transformation in the past hour. His face is slack and pale, and he struggles to keep his eyes open. The school nurse has been encouraging him to sip from his water bottle, and refills it for me before I leave. I take my son straight to the nearest doctor's surgery and we sit in the waiting room. Soon I am regretting this move and wishing I'd taken him to the emergency room instead. The wait is unbearable. But, to my slow relief, during the wait Harrison starts to show signs of recovery. He comes to and stays awake, sipping thirstily from his drink bottle. I assume he's dehydrated from his vomiting episodes. He begins to talk after about thirty minutes of waiting and expresses remorse over missing Alex's latest show and tell.

"Alex always has the best show and tell," he explains tiredly. "Did you know his bag hook is right next to mine?"

We are finally seen by a doctor, who tells me little that I couldn't have guessed for myself. Harrison is dehydrated. Whatever caused this episode seems to have been ejected from his system.

"So what _did_ cause it?" I ask, unimpressed. An older man, the doctor puts away his stethoscope.

"Food poisoning, I expect," he says, finally surprising me. "Something he ingested that his body disagreed with. Could be an allergy, or an intolerance, but more likely it was something that wasn't cooked right. That, coupled with dehydration resulting from the vomiting, explains the lethargy and headaches."

He gives me a prescription for something to aid with rehydration and sends me on my way. I take Harrison next door to the adjoining chemist. The wait here becomes unreasonably long, too, as dottery old chemists potter about behind the counter, reading orders and filling pill boxes as slowly as I think must be humanly possible. It's a good thing none of us waiting are sick or anything. Harrison sits quietly beside me and drinks his water, quite happy now but no longer chatty. My phone rings, rescuing me from my boredom. It's Deb.

"Hey, Deb," I answer, surprised that she's calling. I don't mind, of course. Her voice warms me from my very core, even when she's abrasive or rude or plain nasty.

"How's Harrison?" she asks immediately, and I start to tell her what the doctor said, but once I've told her he's okay, she cuts me off. "Good. I'm glad. Now listen. I'm still not fucking talking to you," she reminds me harshly, "but fucking Vogel's here."

"Where?" I ask stupidly. She can't mean Vogel's at the-

"At the station. Here. I went to the bathroom and came back and she was in Angel's office with him and Matthews. What the fuck is she doing here?"

"I don't know," I say honestly. "I have a heap of missed calls from her but I haven't bothered to call her back." You know, because of all that other soul-crushing stuff that's been on my mind this morning.

"She keeps trying to call me, too. I thought she'd gotten the frigging message that I _don't_ want to speak to her. Now she's here. I told her, I _told_ her to stay the fuck-"

"Deb, where are you right now?" I ask, standing and walking a few steps away from my son and the other waiting patrons. I do not like that Vogel has dropped into my workplace again, especially considering Deb's threat last week. The psychiatrist has motives, an unhealthy fixation with me that I don't feel comfortable with and on top of all that she has a very dangerous son. I'm certain that there can be no positive aspect to this visit.

"Hiding my ass in your lab," my sister answers, "watching through the window like a stalker creep, like you do. She's finished in there with Angel and they're all coming out. She – shit, I think she saw me. Yep, she's coming over." She exhales angrily. "Fucking bitch killed my dad and turns up here like she's got some fucking right? Like she should be fucking breathing? Fuck her, Dex, fucking _fuck her_ and-"

"Put me on speakerphone," I order. "Hide the phone so I can listen. Just let her talk and see what comes out."

The sounds on the other end become more pronounced as Deb changes the setting and I hear the shuffling noise of the phone being nestled into a pile of paperwork. I quickly turn the volume on my own phone up as loud as it will go and listen closely as a door opens.

"Ah, Debra," Vogel's voice comments kindly. "I didn't expect to find you in here."

"What the fuck do you want?" Deb demands as rudely as she can manage. She's such a bitch, but I wouldn't change her for anything. "I thought we were in agreement that you would keep the hell away from me and my workplace."

"Tom Matthews called me in to discuss Zach Hamilton's case," Vogel explains. "I was the boy's treating psychiatrist, after all. He thought I might have been able to help. Of course I can't say anything-"

"Couldn't have said that over the phone?" Deb asks coldly. I press my ear closer to my phone and breathe very softly so I won't be heard.

"It's important to keep up the illusion that I know nothing about Zach's disappearance-"

"That's a fucking bullshit excuse and we both know it. You're here to talk to Dexter."

"Oh, is he around?" Vogel's false innocence lacks the hopefulness I expect to hear. She already knows I'm not there. She's probably already looked around for me or asked someone else.

"No. He isn't. It's just fucking charming little old me." I imagine the challenging look in Deb's eyes. "Is that not good enough for you?"

"Debra," Dr Vogel says calmly, slipping into her counsellor voice. "Let's not talk about 'not good enough'. It's destructive. You don't need to fall into these patterns whenever you get defensive. We've gone very off-track, haven't we? There is really no need for us to be enemies. You and I want the same thing." Even from the other end of the phone line I hear Deb's snort of disagreement. "We both want Dexter to be happy, safe and free. Don't we?" She pauses; Deb doesn't answer. "Your brother is an incredible human being. He can save my son from himself. Dexter is an angel."

Deb laughs bitterly. I close my eyes, aching. An angel? An angel who devastates his sister the way I have mine?

"Are we talking about the same person?" she asks, laughter still in her voice. "I can't say I agree totally with your choice of words."

"Dexter _is_ an angel. He's perfect. He's going to be my Daniel's saviour. He's going to make my family complete." I imagine Vogel smiling. "I told you, Debra, we both want the same things. We want our families whole and happy. So maybe we have to share Dexter – we both love him-"

"You don't love him," Deb explodes. " _I_ do. He's fucking _mine_. I don't have to share him with you or your cock-sucking son! I'm the one who fucking loves him, and believe me, it's not all it's cracked up to be." I open my eyes and stare hard at the box of bandages on the shelf in front of me. My thoughts flash painfully on last night's talk. Deb is still going. "He's hard fucking work. And he's definitely far from fucking perfect. He's fucking selfish and emotionally retarded and a total _asshole_. If you knew the first fucking thing about him you'd know all that. And I've got some more news for you, old lady," Deb barrels forward angrily. I cringe and bite my tongue to prevent myself from snapping out my sister's name to stop her, to call her back to herself. "He doesn't love you. Take a motherfucking hint. If he's not answering your calls, maybe it's because he doesn't want to talk to you. Neither of us does. We want you _out_ of our fucking lives, so just fuck off, will you?"

In the silence that follows I imagine both women glaring at each other. I wish Deb hadn't thrown in that last part. We are supposed to be _fixing_ things with Vogel, not setting progress back.

"I can see that you are very conflicted, Debra," the doctor says finally, voice tight with anger. "I hope that one day, you and I can recover from this, for Dexter's sake. I can see that my presence in his life is making you feel threatened. I think you need some more time to come to terms with the prospect that the warped affection your brother displays for you may not be exclusive to you alone. In the meantime, I hope that you can respect your brother's choice to help me to help Daniel-"

"He can't save your fucking son!" Deb exclaims, frustrated. "These psychopaths, they can't be saved! They can only steal our hearts and control us normal people and fuck up our lives the more we try to help them or be close to them."

"How many times has Dexter saved _your_ life?" Vogel asks forcefully, turning the tables on Deb and taking control of the conversation. "How many times has he pulled you out of trouble, Debra? Think about what your brother has done for you, what he has trusted you with. Do you think there's anyone else he's risked so much for? Dozens of times he's chanced being caught _for you_. He could have killed you in that church and burned it down with you inside." Her voice becomes louder; is she moving closer to the phone? "He didn't. You owe him some respect and some faith. He can do this. He can change Daniel. He-"

"Get away," Deb snaps. "I don't want you anywhere near me, you murderous fucking bitch."

Their voices meld together into a jumble of forcefully calm assurances and angry obscenities, and over the top there is a strange shuffling noise. A loud _crack_ has me yank the phone away from my ear and check the screen. The call disconnects. Deb's phone has fallen from my desk. In my mind Vogel was appealing to Deb, trying to step closer, and in her effort to keep her distance, Deb has knocked into the pile of paperwork on which she perched her phone.

I wait a minute but don't call back. If her phone has fallen somewhere awkward like behind or under the desk and it begins to ring, Vogel will wonder how it got there. Soon Deb will get rid of the psychiatrist and retrieve her phone and call me back.

I'm called to the counter and I collect Harrison's medication. I read the box and administer the first dose there in the chemist. I pack my son back into the car and drive to my apartment. I have him drink more water and then tuck him into bed. He falls straight to sleep. I kiss his forehead and tell him I love him, and then leave him to rest. I stand in my living room and check my phone for the umpteenth time. There is a missed call from an unknown number and a message, _Alright, see you soon at yours_ , but from Deb there is no new message, no missed call. I presume the call and message to be accidental, wrong number-type things. It's been more than twenty minutes and Deb hasn't called back. Surely that's much too long. Even if she isn't talking to me. I hit 'call' and listen to the dial tone. It rings out and sends me to voicemail.

"It's Deb; you know what to do."

"Yeah, I know what to do," I snap at her once the _beep_ has sounded. "It's called 'leave a fucking message', which I shouldn't have to do because you should be answering your stupid phone. Call me back."

I hang up angrily, but as always with my sister, I know I'm not actually angry with her. I'm scared for her. Why would she not answer? She must know I'd worry and want to know how things ended with Vogel. It shouldn't matter that Deb is mad with me or claims to not be talking to me. She herself was worried enough when the doctor turned up to call me.

My stomach twists whenever I think on the heated conversation Deb let me overhear. I'm sure she didn't mean to say most of what came out, but I'm just as sure that she meant every word. _You don't love him._ I _do. He's mine. He's hard fucking work. He's selfish. These psychopaths, they can't be saved. They just steal our hearts and screw up our lives the more we try to be close to them_. I try not to dwell on how much her words hurt me. That's selfish. I need to worry about how _she_ feels, not always how I feel. I wish she would just call me back so I can tell her how she's always right and how sorry I am for my rude voice message and ask what she wants me to do to fix everything I've done. Because I'll do it. I'll do anything.

I try Deb again. Same result. I hang up. I recall with discomfort what she told Vogel – _Take a motherfucking hint. If he's not answering your calls, maybe it's because he doesn't want to talk to you_. Was that in fact addressed at me? Why, then, did she call me in the first place?

Unsettled, I call Jamie and ask how her weekend went. She loved it, but has had an uncomfortable morning packing her things at Quinn's as she moves back in with Angel. I tell her about Harrison's unpleasant morning. I ask if she can come over any earlier today. She is pleased with the excuse to not go back to Quinn's this afternoon. I think, even without him there, she is finding the task depressing. She tells me she is dropping something off but will come straight over.

I sit on the end of Harrison's bed and watch him snooze. Repetitively, like a ritual, I dial Deb's number and listen to the tone ring out. I listen to her pre-recorded voice and hang up just before the beep. I do this over and over until Jamie arrives.

"Is Deb here?" she asks, faking disinterest. I can see that she is worried about running into my sister. She is hurting over her breakup with Quinn and is struggling with the belief that it was because of Deb.

"No, I just borrowed her car to pick up Harrison," I tell her, inferring that the car was what prompted the question. "If you're alright to stay here with him, I'm going to head back to the station to give it back to her."

"I didn't think she was working today," Jamie comments. I look at her in confusion and she explains, "I was just there, dropping Angel's wallet in to him. I didn't see Deb there. When I saw her car here I figured that was why."

"Hmm, that's weird," I say in response. My thoughts are going wild. Deb not at station. Deb not answering phone. Deb and Vogel arguing. I glance at my watch. How long ago was that? Forty minutes now?

"You go," Jamie says with a smile. "You're always so scattered when you're worried about Harrison, but it'll be fine. I'll look after him."

I show her the medication and tell her when he last took a dose. She assures me she will work it all out. My home phone rings and Jamie goes to answer it, muttering about the volume of salespeople that have been calling lately. Feeling slightly better, knowing my son is in more capable hands than mine, I head out the door. As I shut it behind me I call Angel.

"Dexter," he greets me cheerfully. "Jamie said your little Harrison is having a bad day. Is he alright?"

"Yeah; something he ate didn't go down well," I report. "Jamie's with him now. Listen," I add, playing casual, "is Deb around? I can't get her on her phone."

"Deb?" Angel is surprised. "Uh, I haven't seen her for a bit but I didn't see her leave, either. Miller," he calls to our new sergeant, "have you seen Detective Morgan?"

I stop and grasp the handrail of the balcony, straining to hear the woman's response.

"Nah, sorry, Dex," Angel apologises. "It doesn't look like she's here. Probably out getting a burrito or something."

"She's not in my lab, is she?" I suggest. "Sometimes reception in there can be a bit off. Maybe she's looking for a file or something?" Or maybe she's lying on the floor in a pool of her own blood.

Obediently, Angel checks my darkened lab. "No one's here, Dex. Everything as you left it." Relief – no dead sister on the floor of my lab.

"When did you last see her?" I prompt, keeping my tone friendly but falling apart inside. Where the fuck is she? Why isn't she answering her _fucking phone_?! How can she do this to me? I told her, I bloody _told_ her that I love her, didn't I? More than life itself. I _cannot_ lose her.

Panic takes hold at this prospect. Images from my dreams explode through my mind. Unbidden, I see my enemies pinning my sister down as they prepare to kill her. I see my knife in her stomach. I feel her blood, warm and thick, gushing over my hands as I try uselessly to stem the bleed. I see Deb entangled with me; I feel her breath in my mouth; I hear her whispering, "You're never going to lose me." I see her at the bottom of the ocean with a bloody message in her hand: _Too late_.

"Oh, maybe half an hour ago?" my boss estimates. "But I've been in my office." He pauses. "Is everything alright?"

"I think so," I lie. "Just, if you see her, get her to call me straightaway, okay?"

Angel agrees but I know I've put him on alert. I tighten my grip on the handrail and think hard as a means of avoiding panic. I have no evidence that anything has happened to Deb. All I know is that she isn't answering my calls and isn't in the main office of Miami Metro Homicide. She could be in the elevator. She could be in the bathroom again. She could be making out with Quinn in his car. She really could be buying a burrito. I need to chill the fuck out.

I make a plan. I will go back to work and check for myself that she isn't there. I will check my lab for Deb's phone. I will ask around to find out her latest movements. I will check the security cameras. If I get nothing from all that and she still hasn't materialised, I will check her house. I will ring Vogel. No, really, I should do this first. I need to swallow my pride and reach out to the doctor. She is the best source of information, the last person I know to have spoken to my sister. If she has done something then I need to talk to her.

I raise my phone again and flick through my contacts. I begin to dial Vogel's number. At the same time the phone vibrates to let me know I have received a text message. I cancel the call before it even makes a connection and go to messages. Deb. I lower my head to the handrail and exhale heavily with relief. She's alive. She's got her fingers. She's talking to me. She loves me, she really does.

"Thank you, God," I whisper. I am willing to believe in any higher power, real or imagined, if it can bring my sister back to me. I take a second to gather myself back together. I stand up straight again. I open the message. There are two words, _Your move_ , and a photo.

It's not clear what I am looking at. I see people, and white, red and darker colours, too. It's too small to be certain of what it is as a thumbnail, so I open it and wait for my phone to load. After a few seconds the picture takes up the whole screen. I stare, absorbing the information and trying to understand it. It's not at all what I expected.

In the foreground is a male, slightly blurred, head partly cut out by the angle of the camera, sitting on the edge of a bed with messy white sheets, taking a photo with this phone. I infer that the picture is taken in front of a mirror. He wears a white t-shirt with red letters finger-painted on the front: _D.V. <3 D. M_. It makes no sense to me. Why has Deb sent me this weird picture? I use my fingers to zoom in on the naked figure sprawled out behind the man, draped in some kind of red shawl or something. Deb? I zoom slightly closer, uncertainty starting to gnaw at me. Is she wearing that shawl, and nothing else? It's more _around_ her, not really covering anything. Has she slept with this random guy and sent me the photo in an attempt to make me jealous? Her long dark hair is spread around; through it, from this angle, I can't see much of her face, but I see one eye, shut. I zoom back out and look at the photo as a whole once again. With my fingertip I trace one of her long, gangly arms from shoulder to wrist. Is that a cut, there, along her wrist?

"Fuck!" I shout suddenly, standing and leaping back. I don't drop the phone and so I bring the horror with me as I slam into the wall of my neighbour's abandoned apartment. "Fuck! No! God, fuck, _Deb_."

The photo has become suddenly and hideously obvious all of a sudden. The man in the foreground is Saxon, face half missing from the shot, though I should still have recognised him, at least from the cut-off-head clue. The letters on his shirt are written in blood. _D.V. <3 D.M._ is Daniel Vogel 'hearts' my sister. The blanket of red across the white bed sheets I mistook as a shawl is in fact a splash of blood, lacking in spatter because the cut was controlled and the victim has not struggled or moved following the wound. What she is doing, lying on a bed of blood, is being unconscious while her slit wrist slowly bleeds her dry.

Saxon has my sister.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. And sorry, yes – a chemist is a pharmacy. While I refuse to compromise on spelling, I have been trying to Americanise my word choices to fit the fandom but apparently slipped up there, and I'm sure there are other examples.

Saxon has my sister.

My world shifts beneath me as I try to make sense of this. How? Fucking _how_? I left her at work, surrounded by Miami Metro Homicide detectives. Capable people. Smart, alert, armed people. Alright, not the smart _est_ , but still, people who would never this happen to Deb. Shit, alright, actually, they did let her get nabbed by a serial killer before, years ago, but Rudy Cooper was her boyfriend and Oliver Saxon is known to our workmates as bad news. They wouldn't let a wanted man walk in and then out with one of their own, would they? Fuck, I work with some useless pricks. Still, how? Deb's smart, too smart for this. How did she go from losing her shit with Vogel in my lab to naked and bleeding in bed with Saxon in less than an hour?

Vogel, obviously, has something to do with this. She is working with her son, despite the disparity between their motives. The criminal psychiatrist is the last person I know to have spoken to Debra. I feel a chill as I recall Deb's last coherent words – _Get away; I don't want you anywhere near me, you murderous fucking bitch_ – and the muddled argument that followed. I imagined the doctor just got too close while trying to console my sister and in stepping away, Deb must have knocked the phone to the floor. I assumed it was nothing to worry about, just a continuation of the same line of heated discussion. What if there was more? What if Vogel was, at that moment, drawing a weapon or otherwise making known her intention to hurt Deb? While I listened passively, mildly annoyed with Deb for pissing Vogel off instead of freaking out like I should have?

 _They have her, they have her, they have her_. I've been dreaming of this horror for a week and now it's here, and though it's just a photo and a single cut it's much worse than those devastating nightmares where I reel Deb close and then watch her die. It's worse because it's happening, really happening, and I didn't even get to hold her or be close with her before she's being taken off me.

I battle worry and self-disgust by trying to think rationally. Could the old woman have pulled a gun on my sister and marched her out of the building with the threat of a concealed firearm? What about a knife? No. I force a breath out. No, absolutely not. Deb is too quick; Vogel couldn't possibly have gotten a gun out and aimed quicker than my sister could have done the same and fired. And a blade? Forget it. Even if she _did_ , my disobedient sister wouldn't have played along. She wouldn't have let herself be overpowered and manipulated like that. She would have fought back, called attention to Vogel's weapon, done _something_ to avoid being pushed around.

Alright. Next theory. I look back at the picture, hating absolutely everything about it. So Vogel didn't march Deb out at gunpoint, but somehow, Deb has still managed to end up in Saxon's grasp. I touch the screen again, my fingertip on Deb's open hand. I think of her hand holding mine at Rita's gravesite. All this blood... No spatter. No movement. The hand has remained in a downward-facing position. Deb was unconscious before the cut was made. Did they drug her, like I do to my victims? It comes to mind because it's what _I_ would do, but I cannot visualise how it would work. Vogel definitely doesn't have the strength to have carried Deb out, but what if it was something different, something to make my sister woozy and pliant? Could she have jabbed her with something mild and walked Deb out like a drunk? Seriously, my co-workers would have some explaining to do if they observed their former lieutenant stumbling about the office at nine o'clock in the morning, swearing indiscriminately and being led out the door by a consulting psychiatrist, and _didn't_ mention it with concern to Batista.

Saxon has Deb. It doesn't matter how it happened. It happened. He has her and I need to get her back. I promised her I would never let anything happen to her. It seems I am a liar. Already Deb has been stolen, knocked out, stripped and cut. I don't know if anything worse has been done. I recall Saxon fake-flirting with her last week and my fingernails dig into my own palms. Since he has touched her I will hurt him; since he has cut her once I will cut him twenty times; since he has taken her clothing I will take his humility. But if he has violated her in the way his photograph is meant to insinuate… I don't know yet, but I am a creative being. I will find punishments that will feel to him like they are fitting of his crime, though to me, to Deb, nothing will be enough.

I inhale very slowly, feeling my focus sharpening as my darkness unfurls inside me. My field of vision narrows and my heart beats faster, moving oxygen to my muscles in preparation for action, like it always does when I'm slipping into predatory mode. Saxon is playing with fire. He has my sister, my poor, beautiful, defenceless little baby sister. _My_ sister. _Mine_. He's trying to take her away from me. He's hurt her and soon she could be dead. I am convinced that she can't be yet – I would know, I would feel it, if my living conscience had been taken out of the world. Plus, what does Saxon have to gain from killing her? I'd just kill him back. He is playing with me, dangling her life before me to see what I will do. _Your move_. He is playing an extremely dangerous game and I am going to ensure he is burnt.

"Fuck!" I shout again, frustrated but feeling channelled, concentrated, _angry_. I have done so much wrong by my Deb but all of this goes out of my head as I become obsessed with the task of retrieving her. I have only a short window of time to save her, unless Saxon is even now suppressing Deb's blood flow to ensure she lasts the time taken for me to arrive.

My shout has caught the attention of the building's inhabitants, and I hear my own door being unlocked from the inside. Jamie is coming to check on me. I take flight along the balcony, down the stairs and to Deb's car. I am still clutching the phone and glance again at the photo. I assume the picture is taken at Vogel's house but with the timeframe available to me and to Deb I cannot run with assumptions. My move, hey? I hit 'call' and Deb's photo, smiling, alive, young, springs up. I'll ensure she gets to be like that again. I listen to the dial tone. It rings only once.

"Hello, Dexter."

Fucking Saxon. I use the remote to unlock the car door as I approach at a run. Upstairs, I hear someone else calling my name. I glance back. Jamie is leaning over the handrail, waving to me, phone to her ear. I wave back and force a smile, hoping she's silly enough to think everything's alright.

"Knight to F3," I grind out through my fake smile, indicating a move into check in chess. My voice sounds like a growl from an animal, and that's fitting, because that's how I feel. Like an animal, one with big fucking claws that are going to slash through Saxon's face and body the way he slashed through my sister's arm. I get into the car and slide the key into the ignition. "Where is she?"

"Skipping the pleasantries, then? That's alright, I understand. I'm eager to see you, too." I can hear the smile in Saxon's voice. He is enjoying playing with me, but he's in deeper than he realises. He just clearly doesn't understand the stakes at this level. "Your darling sister is already here, with our mom and me, at the family home. Playing games with us, you know, as families do. Do join us, Dexter."

I have already started the car and peeled out of the car park. I don't bother with my seatbelt. I don't pay much mind to speed limits or stop signs.

"Which game did you have in mind?" I ask, tone controlled. I whip around corners and between cars wherever I see a gap that might fit Deb's car. My focussed tunnel vision alerts me to upcoming hazards immediately in my path in time for me to react but does not take much note of periphery distractions. There are no distractions shiny enough, scary enough, big enough to distract me from my task. Saxon has my sister and I am going to get her back. I am not armed and don't expect I will be lucky enough to find a knife lying around Deb's car, but my darkness assures me it doesn't matter. We'll find something. We always do. We'll find something sharp or heavy or otherwise useful and utilise it to stab, bludgeon or strangle the life out of the one who has taken Deb. I don't allow myself to wonder whether I will find her dead or alive. I _must_ find her alive, and I _must_ be able to save her. I promised. I cannot accept the alternative. The alternative is a dark place indeed.

Either way, Saxon is going to be extremely sorry he ever laid hands on what is _mine_.

"I see that you are quite partial to chess," Saxon notes calmly, as if he doesn't have a person dying on his bed, as if he doesn't have anything to worry about. He is about to. "But I have always preferred _Operation_."

I race through an intersection on the orange light, trying to outrun the sound of the power saw in my dream as it sliced my sister up. He doesn't know about my nightmares but he knows I understand the threat. He pauses and waits for me to lose it, to rant and rave that he's to leave Debra alone.

"I've played it before," I confirm conversationally, voice emotionless. He's getting no reaction from me until I arrive. Then he will receive the full brunt of my fury. "It isn't very fair of you to start without me, though. Not very _brotherly_."

"We haven't started," Saxon assures me. "Not really. I've just laid out the board with the pieces."

She's not dead, I read from that. Not yet, anyway. I don't want to give him any further power over me but I can't help saying, "That's good. And don't forget, it's a four player game, so make sure Deb's up for it."

I imagine that Saxon smirks in the pause that follows. I've let on how scared I am for my sister. I decide I don't care. As if he didn't already know she is special to me. That's why he had his mother take her in the first place.

"She'll be up for it, Dexter," Saxon promises softly. "Are you?"

"You have no idea. I'll see you very soon." I hang up and drop the phone onto my lap. I press my foot down on the accelerator. Deb is alive, and soon Saxon won't be. Vogel is going to need to do some fast sweet talking, too, if she doesn't want to end up the same. No, fuck it, I'll just kill her, too. What difference does it make? It's only a week earlier than I'd planned. Killing them now isn't the intended arrangement, I know, but the Vogels have put a big dent in my plans and they're going to die for it. So I'm not ready. So I don't have Hannah's DNA to plant at the scene. So I don't have a weapon. So fucking what? I'm angry.

"Angry will do fine, little brother," Brian whispers from just behind my shoulder. "We can use that. This will be fun."

"Forget fun," Harry warns worriedly from the other side of the backseat. I glance between my ghosts in the mirror. "Whatever Saxon says, this isn't a game, Dexter. This is your sister's life. You don't get to play with that. You need a plan. You need to get it together and _think_ through what you're going to do when you get there. There won't be time to spare on mistakes – you can't afford it. Debra can't afford it."

"He's such a worrywart," Brian comments, a little snidely, rolling his eyes. I fly through another intersection; two cars coming across it slam on their brakes to avoid colliding with me. "Saxon isn't going to let her _die_."

"You don't know that," I point out, because _I_ don't know it for sure, either. I'm assuming. I'm hoping. But Saxon is a freak like me, and sometimes logic doesn't get first pick when psychopaths are choosing their motivations for the day.

"Alright," Brian agrees, "I don't _know_ , but we have to run with that assumption, don't we? Otherwise, what's the point? I keep telling you, she's going to die, but you obviously still don't believe me. That's why we're racing over there, isn't it? Because you think you can save her? Well, if that's what you want to believe, then you also have to believe that Saxon will keep her alive for you. Otherwise," he explains rationally, looking earnestly at Harry, "she's already fucked, isn't she?"

In my mirror, my father looks at my brother with a deeply disturbed look, before turning back to meet my eyes in the reflection.

"Dexter," he appeals, " _think_. You're unarmed. You're alone. You're unprepared. Saxon has all the power – he knows you, he has Vogel's deep knowledge of you and your practices at his disposal, and he has set this up on his own turf and his own terms-"

"Ye of little faith," Brian says dryly. "We can handle this. Just watch."

"All I'm saying, Dexter, is maybe this is the endgame," Harry says finally. I turn a corner and slam on my brakes to avoid mowing down a young family crossing at a pedestrian crossing. They stop in the centre of the road, frightened, and I force a smile and wave them along.

"What do you mean, the endgame?" I demand of my father. Once the family is off the road I take off again.

"Rule number one: don't get caught," Harry recites, while Brian rolls his eyes again and mutters, "Here we go." My father ignores him and carries on. "Rule number two: never kill an innocent. The first rule was Vogel's; the second one was mine. Your sister is an innocent, Dexter, whatever she believes herself to have become. If you go to Vogel's and waste even five minutes trying to overpower them – with no weapon or plan, by the way, so good luck with that – before you get to Debra and you're lucky enough to find her still breathing, you're still not a doctor. You still need to drive her to a hospital or call an ambulance and wait. She doesn't have half an hour, Dexter. Call her an ambulance _now_."

"You're a moron, old man," Brian sniggers. He leans forward to press his hands on my shoulders. "He's an idiot – losing his shit in his old age. As if you'd call an ambulance. It just proves you knew she was there, which links you to Vogel and Saxon who are about to be _dead_ and _open_ all over the carpet in that house, and leaves _you_ open to a lot of nasty, awkward questions later. Better to keep your mouth shut."

"You keep _your_ mouth shut," Harry snaps, losing patience. "When _you_ took Debra and Dexter didn't call the police, it looked suspicious. James Doakes never forgot. Dexter," he says now, trying to calm himself and get through to me, "your sister's blood is all over that room. _If_ everything goes to 'plan' – using that word loosely – and you knock politely on the front door and you're let in and you kill the Vogels without a hitch and get Debra to a hospital in time, there's still a crime scene left behind with her blood all over it, plus a rather difficult-to-explain gash across her wrist, placing her there. You two are going to be linked to this anyway. _Call the ambulance_."

"Brian's right," I argue. "How am I meant to explain how I knew she's there? The paramedics could walk in right in the middle of me putting another fucking teacup through Vogel's neck. I'm going to get caught out."

"I don't know how you're going to explain it," Harry confesses, sitting back in his seat sadly, "but you need to make a choice. Vogel's rule or mine; Debra's life or your freedom. Make it fast."

My conscience and my darkness sit expectantly in the back while I speed through the streets, cursing under my breath and deliberating. They're both right. I'm not in a great situation either way.

"Jesus, Deb," I mutter finally, furiously. I unlock the phone and dial emergency. "You're going to be the death of me."

I am patched through quickly. I put on a pinched voice and fake accent and claim to have seen a man and an older lady dragging a woman from a car into a house. I mention that I have heard screaming and pleading from inside and loud crashing sounds that might indicate physical violence. I add that the man is known to neighbours for fits of rage towards his mother and abusive tirades aimed at passersby. I give Vogel's address and hang up.

Next I ring Angel again. I tell him that Deb has sent me a very strange photograph that has worried me and looks to have been taken at Evelyn Vogel's house. I say that I am driving over there now to see if everything is okay, since she still won't answer her phone. He says Quinn spoke with Deb outside the building before she left. Apparently she was alone, angry and determined.

"Sorry, bro, I was going to call you but I got sidetracked. She was ranting about someone stealing her phone and apparently she was _pissed_ ," Angel reports with a fond chuckle. "Dr Vogel was here earlier. Maybe they got chatting and left their phones on the same desk, and the good doctor left with the wrong one? Quinn came in a minute after we last spoke and said he saw Deb earlier heading over to the motor pool to borrow a car. Insert stream of obscenities here."

"That makes sense," I agree affably, while inside I am blazing with anger. Vogel didn't drug or threaten Deb. She just left with Deb's phone, and my sister, knowing what damage the Vogels could do to us with the device, followed. She probably suspected they would use the phone to bait me. She probably also considered the content of our text messages, information which might place us in strife if it were to fall into the wrong hands. I can't think of anything offhand that we've shared via text that is particularly damning, but that doesn't mean it's not there. That's why she went after it. Straight into their hands. My hand tightens on the steering wheel. I am furious with her for being so headstrong and proactive and for not finding a way to get in contact with me, but more than that I am furious with Vogel for taking advantage of Deb's predictability. I keep my voice easy and friendly with Angel. "It's probably nothing. I'll go and see what's going on."

We hang up and I let out a frustrated breath. There. Based covered. I have a good reason to be at Vogel's so far as the law is concerned, there is an ambulance on its way to save my sister and I am only streets away from getting there first to take out the Vogels.

"Happy?" I ask my father. He shrugs.

"Are you?"

"We will be when Saxon and Vogel's throats are open and we can feel their blood on our hands," Brian informs him pleasantly. I catch his eye disapprovingly in the mirror and he lets his head fall back against the headrest in exasperation. "Alright, yes, and when poor little Deb is safe and sound, et cetera, et cetera. Pathetic."

My ghosts go their separate ways as I pull up one street over from Vogel's house. I find my lock picking kit in my pocket, where it usually is, along with my gloves. There's no plan but there's no need to be clumsy about it. Anyway, Deb told me to fuck my plans. I leave Deb's car and walk amiably along the quiet street until I spot the back of Dr Vogel's house. In my pocket, my phone vibrates constantly. That unknown number is calling again. I block it, directing it to voicemail where the caller will learn my name and hopefully realise they've got the wrong number, and switch the phone to silent. Even a vibrating phone might be one sound too many in the next few minutes.

Checking no one is looking, I slip into someone's yard and run to their back fence. I vault over it and land in Vogel's backyard. Perfect.

The house is misleadingly silent. I aim to be the same. I pick the lock on the back door and ease it open, sharp pick ready in my hand. It's tiny but it'll serve my purpose if I require it to. I slip inside, noting no movement. I remain very still, alert, listening. I hear shuffling noises towards the front of the house. The sitting room. Someone is walking around in the sitting room, feet padding quietly on the plush carpets. The temptation to stride in there and stick the person with my lock pick is strong but I overcome it and decide that I must fully understand the game before I can play it. I need to know where the other player is. I need to find Deb. I need a better tool. Then, armed with all that, I'll be ready to jump in and play.

I make my way steadily towards the stairs. I duck into a room I haven't been in before. No one is here, and it looks like a storage space. I quietly dig through some of the boxes, keeping my attention on the door and thinking very intently on the time I am taking. _Tick, tock_... I visualise the photo sent from my sister's phone and imagine the blood draining from her even now. I am running out time; _she_ is running out of time.

I find a sharp pair of scissors and head back out. The hallway is abandoned. I am convinced that the person in the sitting room is Vogel, watching the road, waiting for me anxiously. The deranged mother. I am just as convinced that Saxon, the predator, is waiting for me upstairs with Deb, his prey, firmly grasped in his claws. I open the scissors, ready to inflict damage, and take each step carefully and softly. I keep my breath low and shallow. I listen intently. I hear nothing. I try to feel better, knowing I am getting closer and closer to my little sister with each step, but even her gravity has no effect on me right now. I am too angry, or maybe her magic doesn't work this close to death. I've never known her to be this close before.

Upstairs is just as quiet and still as the rest of the house. A metre or so from the stairs is a glass and timber cabinet full of old china, which I hide behind for a moment as I assess the situation. Saxon, I know, is waiting for me here, somewhere. All doors but one are wide open. That's where they are. That's where he is keeping my sister, and where he is hiding, knowing I will be drawn to her, knowing that seeing her in this state will paralyse me. He'll be hiding behind the door, waiting for me to race in to Deb's side. Does he think I'm stupid? I tiptoe to the door and take a breath, readying myself. Maybe I _am_ stupid. Well, fuck him, and me, and everyone else. If Saxon wants me, then that's what he'll get. The difficulty will be in holding back from killing him too quickly.

I shoulder through the door forcefully and turn immediately to attack the person behind the door. Except there's no one there. Unexpected. Confused, I look quickly around the room. No Saxon. Bled-out naked woman on the bed.

Too late.

Unconsciously I lower my scissors. My nightmares have been realised.

In my momentary shock I feel a shift in the air behind me. I start to turn, raising my scissors, but I am a millisecond too late. A strong body slams into mine and two hands slide past my head, lowering a metal bolt to just below my chin. Saxon wrenches back and I am yanked against him, breathless, air flow completely constricted by the choking pressure of the metal.

"Sneaking in without telling mother?" he murmurs into my ear as I struggle. "That's against the rules."

He must have been in one of those open rooms, waiting, baiting me into the closed one. I _was_ stupid. I had no plan and now he has the upper hand. My throat is compressed under his hold. I pull against it with one hand to prevent him crushing my windpipe completely. With my other I flick the scissors closed and try to turn them over in my hand. It's an awkward operation and seems to take an age. Saxon begins to walk backwards, dragging me out of the room and into the hallway. Away from Deb. I kick out violently and catch the door, which slams back noisily against the wall. Deprived of oxygen, my brain steals power from my eyes and muscles, and the world darkens from the edges in.

"No need for all that," Saxon goes on with a smile in his voice. "It's only a game." He pulls again and I manage to get my hand between the bolt and my neck. I get a tiny reprieve and a single swallow of air gets down my throat before the pressure returns. It's enough. I drive the scissors back and down. I hit something solid and keep pushing. The pressure at my throat is lessened as Saxon cries out, and I shove away, pulling my scissors out of his leg as I turn, ready. Vogel's son presses his fingers to his wound, noting the blood with surprise. He's changed his shirt. The one with Deb's blood is gone.

"I'm done playing," I snarl. "Your games are fucked."

Daniel Vogel looks up at me with challenge bright in his blue eyes. He straightens and shifts his bolt in his grip.

"The game isn't over until _I_ say," he informs me sternly. He steps slowly forward; I counter him by stepping aside, keeping my distance.

"I disagree, but if you insist, then we can keep playing 'til the end. You're going to lose," I add in a scornful whisper. My confidence shakes him. For the first time he seems uncertain. "I'm only here to collect my toys, and then I can leave. We don't need to play this out."

Well, we do. I will kill him; he's going to die one way or another. But it doesn't need to be as drawn-out as he's making it. Downstairs, I hear Vogel's voice, calling worriedly to her son. He watches me, calculating his options, and pulls himself up straight. I am annoyed. He is going to be deliberately difficult.

"I'm afraid we do," he tells me. Slowly, blood soaks into the fabric around his small leg wound. "Roll the dice, Dexter, and see what you get."

"I roll a two," I reply coldly. "That's how many people are walking out of this house alive."

Saxon smirks and his eyes narrow. "Agreed." Neither of us looks over as Vogel arrives at the top of the staircase.

"Daniel," she breathes, horrified by the scene before her. "Dexter? What's going on?"

"Don't play dumb, Evelyn," I snap. "You know exactly what's happening. You stole my sister and this is the reckoning for your mistakes."

"I-I didn't," Vogel stammers, seemingly frightened. "I didn't touch her. I only took her phone, that's all, that's all Daniel asked me to do-"

"And that didn't seem an odd request from your psychopathic son?" I ask incredulously. I am amazed by her naivety and spare her a revolted look. Saxon is smart; he uses that moment to pounce, striking out with his bolt. I duck and parry with my scissors. My opponent's weapon has a great deal of force behind it and dents the side of mine. I flip the scissors in my fingers and slash at him, missing his chest by centimetres. I maintain my assault, forcing him away from me with dangerous swipes, driving him back. He keeps hitting out with the bolt but the movements are mostly defensive and I avoid them. Dr Vogel screams both our names, begs us to stop. We ignore her, even as she runs over and stands at the edge of our fight.

"Don't kill him! Don't kill him!" she screeches. I don't know whether she's addressing me or Saxon or both. Her son swings his bolt at me, once catching my forearm and sending a shock of pain through my bone all the way to my shoulder. My grip springs open on reflex and I drop the scissors.

Saxon takes full advantage of my disarming. He throws his weight into me and we crash into the doorframe of the bedroom. I have a moment to glance inside. Deb is where I left her, not moving, wrist exposed and blood pool roughly the size it was in the picture. If Saxon was playing by the rules, that wrist would be covered and held above her heart to keep her alive for me. If her heart was beating the pool should be bigger.

Momentarily I don't understand. I promised. I promised I would never let anything happen to her. Yet somehow...

With a roar of unspeakable rage I hurl Saxon to the floor and drop down over him, pummelling with my fists. He belts me with his metal bolt but I hardly notice the pain in my gloved hands, arm, shoulder, chest, wherever he hits me. I am consumed, dark and hateful through and through with nothing left in the world to pull me back from it. Saxon should have known better. He should have thought through what it really meant to unleash me, to remove my collar.

Vogel rushes away, presumably so she doesn't have to watch this violence. I continue my enraged beating. I don't think on what I saw in the room. I don't think on what it means, for me, for the future. I just hate. And fight with everything I have.

Saxon changes tactic and jabs me, hard, with the end of the bolt. He drives it upwards into my sternum, winding me. I lay off briefly, drawing pained breaths. He comes at me anew, sitting forwards, striking at my head. I take the first two hits without retaliation, my fingers griping across the floor, feeling for the scissors. My fingers close on one of the blades and I slide it over to where I can get a decent grasp. I slash up and catch Saxon across the cheek. Blood wells from the diagonal cut. He looks like any of my old victims. How fitting – he's about to become one. He sits back on his ankles, taken by surprise at the return of the scissors to the game. I forget that I need to torture him, that later I will regret not taking the time to make him pay. I get a solid grasp on the scissors and drive my whole body forward, pointed blades aimed at my opponent's throat, guiding them home.

A smack to the side of my head throws me off-course. My scissors are buried into the plaster wall beside Saxon's ear. I prepare to pull them out, turning as I do so, but freeze when a cold metal cylinder is pressed to my forehead.

"Dexter," Vogel says shakily, holding her revolver in both unsteady hands, "I don't want to hurt you. Please, stop this. Come away. Come on – come with me."

Saxon is not one to let opportunity pass him by. While I am unmoving, he propels himself forward and pushes me cruelly into the wall. We struggle briefly while Vogel barks our names, but Saxon gets and holds the upper hand. Hand tight around my neck, he knocks my head back into the wall, and in my second of disorientation, he brings the bolt back to my throat. I need to use my spare hand to push back against his pressure to keep my windpipe from being crushed beyond saving.

"Boys, please, both of you, just _stop this_ ," Vogel begs. Her gun is still aimed at me. "It isn't necessary. You don't need to do this. You could be _brothers_."

"I'm not your fucking son," I snarl up at her. "And I'm not _his_ fucking brother!"

Saxon grins at me, feral. "That's not a nice thing to say," he chides, and I spit in his face, every bit an animal as he is. "And that was a bit gross, Dex."

"Daniel," Vogel scolds, "stop the stirring. Now. This is not a game."

"Mother, it's always been a game," Saxon disagrees. He widens his grin at me. "Hasn't it, Dexter? A family game."

"I'm going to kill you!" I scream, out of control, voice choked by the metal bar. "You killed my sister!"

He laughs; _laughs_. Like something is funny. Vogel shakes her head, disbelieving.

"No," she insists. "Daniel wouldn't. You're mistaken, Dexter."

How can she not know what is lying in a bloody heap in a room in her own house?

"He did, he fucking _did_!" I maintain. I gesture wildly at the room beside us, and, nervously, Vogel steps back until she can see inside. She stares at the ghastly scene. She stares for a long time.

"Daniel," she breathes again. "You said you wouldn't."

I wait for her to turn her gun on her liar of a son, to save me, to realise what she's done by letting this monster live. She doesn't. She is a bitch, like Deb said. The bitch that killed my dad and let my sister slip away, too.

"I'm sorry, Mom," Saxon says without any genuine feeling. "It was Dexter's fault." He pushes harder; I do the same, trying to save myself. I don't care about living – I care only about breathing long enough to tear this monster to small pieces. "He wouldn't call back; he wouldn't come and see me. I couldn't help it. Now, Dexter," he says, addressing me once again, "we're playing for keeps. Since you've _finally_ decided to turn up and help us, you're going to do exactly as I say. You're going to tell me _everything_ your father taught you – you're going to show me how to hang plastic, how to clean up a crime scene and most importantly, how to judge whether someone is guilty enough to be picked. You're going to teach me how to be the son my mother wants." He grins savagely. "That should be all I need. A few hours of your time. That should be enough time to absorb your Code from you. Then you can do what you want. You can get the fuck over yourself and do the logical thing and stay with us, or you can die, if that's what you'd like."

Vogel looks at her son worriedly. "Daniel, I don't want him dead."

"Maybe we can make him see sense," he suggests. He turns his smile back to me. "Maybe he'd rather live, with us?" It's a joke, a private joke between us – he doesn't want me to survive this encounter. He wants me dead with the back of my head open. But his mother's desires present him with another little game that he just can't resist. "What do you think, Dexter? We could be _brothers_. A happy little family of killers."

The 'f' word pulls me out of my sensible paralysis and I drive myself forwards into the bolt, thrusting up with the scissors. Saxon ducks his head away and Vogel fearfully presses her gun tighter against my skin.

 _Bang_.

The gunshot is quick and painless. Everything is dark. They got me. Damn it, they got me! I'm intensely disappointed. I was so sure she wouldn't shoot, too. I open my eyes to see where I've ended up – I can guess, with my track record, that I won't be seeing clouds and angels – but to my surprise I'm still in the hallway. Am I a ghost? In slow motion, both Saxon and Vogel spring back from me. I blink, my shock passes and time resumes. I am not dead. I wasn't even hit.

"Consider that your warning shot, motherfuckers."


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I'm just playing with them, not making any money out of it, and I hope Showtime doesn't mind.

My heart soars. It's like someone turns the lights back on. " _Deb_?"

"Dex, get the fuck over here!"

I shove away from the startled Saxon and stumble down the hallway in the direction of her voice. My sister steps out from behind the china cabinet with her gun drawn and reaches a hand out to me. I take it like a lifeline and she pulls me behind her.

She's alive. Impossible, yet obvious. After all, how could my universe continue to exist if she were no longer in it? The girl on the bed – I don't know who it is, but it's not my sister. My sister is here with me, lungs drawing breath and heart beating and very pissed off. Not unconscious. Not cut. Not bleeding. Not raped. Not naked. Not dead. Not anything but perfect and alive.

"Deb," I say hoarsely, unbelieving of my good luck, touching her shoulder when she glances back at me to check I'm alright. She's real. She is too focussed on the immediate danger to be affected much by my tender touch, though her eyes do quickly scan me for injuries. "You're alive."

"Yeah; what the fuck else would I be?" She glares at me. "And would it kill you to answer your fucking phone, asshole?"

The anonymous calls. The text. The call to the house. She _did_ try to contact me. And she's alive. I can hardly believe my amazing luck. She was never in Saxon's grasp and she was never dying. Everything has been set right. She's alive, she's here, she's so close. I feel the pieces of me falling back into place. The hatred that was boiling me alive only seconds ago has evaporated at the sight of her, and if Deb were to say, let's just go without killing them, I think I would happily do it because I've got what I wanted. I could always come back to kill them.

I can't bring myself to release the hand she offered me, warm and alive. She shakes me off, not understanding my clinginess, and turns her attention back to the Vogels. They remain where I left them, Vogel upright with her pistol hanging in her inexperienced hands, Saxon glaring up at us from the floor, blood dripping slowly from the cut to his cheek. The wall behind them is marked with a fresh bullet hole.

"You see, Dexter, I told you," Vogel says, voice quavering but indignant. She waves once in my sister's direction. "Debra is fine. Daniel would never."

"So nice of you to come by, little sister," Saxon comments smoothly. He smirks at me, false apology brightening his eyes. I can see through it that he's disappointed with Deb's timing. "Sorry for the confusion – I must have gotten her mixed up with this whore I met. Easy mistake to make."

"Steal my phone, hey, fuckers?" Deb demands, incredibly annoyed but not about the jibe. She pulls a cell, identical to her own, from her pocket and throws it to the floor between us. "What, thought I wouldn't notice you'd swapped it? It doesn't even have the same background photo. And I turn up here to find you beating the living fuck out of my brother? Not fucking cool."

"Debra-" Vogel begins.

"Don't 'Debra' me," my sister cuts her off harshly. She keeps the gun trained on the psychiatrist and takes an unconscious step forward. I match her, keeping close and adjusting my grip on the scissors. I am prepared for another round with the Vogels. This time I have back-up. This time I have my sister. "You don't get to talk to me. You don't _fucking_ talk to me. Not after what you've done. You killed my dad."

"That was a very long time ago, Debra," Vogel reminds Deb firmly. The doctor is regaining some of her inner strength following the shock of the gunshot.

"Yeah? Maybe if you're a fucking hundred years old, it seems like a fuckload of time, but not for me. Not for _us_." Deb jerks her head back at me to indicate my part in the issue. I try to step around her to stand at her side but she keeps her body between me and the Vogels. She continues to inch forward, though I don't think she realises. We are beyond the safety of the cabinet now. I am uncomfortable with her moving further into the open and closer to our opponents, even though we are both armed and capable. I stay alert. Saxon slowly gets to his feet. Deb takes a big angry step and orders, "Stay the fuck down!" but her movement prompts Vogel to raise her gun again and take shaky aim at Deb's chest.

"Stay where you are, Debra," the doctor demands. "I don't particularly want to see you hurt but I won't let you hurt my son."

"Won't let me?" Deb sneers. "What are you going to do to stop me? Shoot me? I can put three bullets in him and two in you before you even twitch a finger."

"You won't," Dr Vogel says with certainty. Saxon straightens beside her and smiles at my sister and I challengingly. "You don't want to be that person. You don't want to kill anyone."

Deb steadies her stance and closes one eye. "You clearly don't know me very well."

"So do it," Saxon speaks up, calling on her bluff. Deb opens her eye again. "Shoot us." In the long pause that follows, Dr Vogel glances worriedly at her son, but he shows no concern. When Deb does nothing, he grins. "Thought so. You don't have it in you," he adds with cruel conviction, as though this is a bad thing, as though my sister is somehow lacking. Deb is taken aback. I feel my fists clench with anger at this. There's nothing wrong with her. "You're all full of ethics and morals and shit – you killed one bitch and spent six months at the bottom of a bottle trying to justify it to yourself. You can't kill us. You couldn't hit a stray dog with your car and not feel torn up. You're _pathetic_." He laughs. "Even your kill record is half-assed. Even that's half mine."

"What are you talking about?" I demand, when Deb only blinks in confusion, power over the exchange pulled out of her hands. Saxon's eyes flicker to me briefly but he keeps his attention with Debra, determined to undermine her as deeply as he can, to debilitate my backup.

"Your hitman? Guzman? Not yours. Mine. Though, I have to say," Saxon admits with a genuine smile, "you do know how to make a man feel good about his work, Detective Morgan. I've pulled off plenty of kills and framed someone else for it, but never managed to convince the scapegoat of their own guilt before." Deb, Vogel and I stare at Saxon as this sinks in. He seems irritated by how long it takes us to understand and has to elaborate, voice betraying his frustration. "I followed you to that storage locker. I saw Guzman leaving with the jewels. I took your other gun from your car, shot him, planted your blood on the glass and left. Jesus, Detective, don't look so shocked," he snaps at Deb when she continues to stare silently. "Who did you _think_ you were dealing with here? This is what I _do_. Didn't you ever wonder why you couldn't _remember_ killing him?"

I can scarcely believe it. I'm the one who found Deb's gun in the glove box of Javier 'El Sapo' Guzman's car and traces of Deb's blood on the shattered glass. I'm the one who confronted her about it and covered her tracks. She was so hazy and scattered, trapped in her depressive spiral. I did what I had to do. And now I'm told she didn't even do it? Thinking back to our conversation in her house that day, I wonder whether I was too hard on her, whether I actually talked her into believing she'd done it. Likewise, beside me, my sister is having trouble processing this new information.

"You killed Javier Guzman?" Deb repeats, sure he's lying. "You followed me and killed him?"

"You catch on quick, Detective," Saxon drawls.

"But you didn't even know us back then."

Saxon's smile widens and his eyes sparkle with cunning. "Didn't I? I've been keeping tabs on Dexter for a long time now. As soon as he started to get to know my mother," he explains, looking briefly at the psychiatrist, "I made it my business to get to know him and the people in his life. Offhand, Detective, your DNA was remarkably easy to obtain. You both need to get some decent locks on your houses."

I have been incredibly stupid. Saxon has been watching me for months. How did I never notice that I was being stalked? I think back to that time. My whole focus was on dragging Deb back into my life. I must have missed the patterns becoming obvious around me.

"But _why_?" Deb persists, uncomprehending. "Why try to frame me?"

"All part of the game," I realise, gaining me an appreciative nod from Vogel's son. "He wanted to see what I would do."

"You were very quick to cover for her, Dexter," he agrees. "You really are a wonderful brother. Now that everything is out in the open, I know you'll fit into our family perfectly."

"Daniel's right," Vogel says with a tentative smile. How does she manage to misread sarcasm so easily? "Dexter, I know you think you love your sister, but you aren't like her. You're different; special. A gift from God. We're a part of the natural order," she adds, implicating herself as one of us. I find I am not surprised to learn that she herself is, or at least identifies as, a psychopath like Saxon and me. It explains her fascination with serial killers, her lack of empathy towards my relationship with my sister, even her poor parenting of her own son. "We should look out for each other. We could be a family."

Deb loses her cool. "He's not your family, he's mine," she says fiercely, striding forward without warning. I leap after her as Vogel retrains her revolver on Deb and Saxon moves to meet her with his bolt raised. "He was never going to be yours. He's fucking _mine_ and if you... Dex, fuck!" She's cut off when I catch up, loop my arm around her waist and yank her back out of reach of Saxon's falling weapon. I throw her behind me in case Vogel's gun goes off, sure the doctor won't fire on me. As soon as her feet are on the floor again, Deb continues ranting, pointing her gun accusingly at our opponents over my shoulder as I back up. "You creep psychopath fuckers stole our fucking lives! You evil fucking _bitch_ , you turned my brother into a killer and then murdered my dad! If it weren't for you, all this fucked-up shit in our lives never would have happened-"

"If not for me, your brother would be in an institution right now, and you wouldn't have lived past your teens – he would have killed you," Vogel snaps at Deb, who only screams in frustration and fights to get past me. I struggle to hold her back and keep my scissors ready but also away from her.

"So you're a freaking psychic, too?" Deb demands wildly. "You just _knew_ that he was going to grow up to be like your own screw-up son? How? That's right, you fucking didn't, you fucking knew _nothing_! My brother was a good kid, he was never going to hurt me, he could have been fine without your wonderful fucking influence on our dad, but you ruined _everything_." Deb is screaming now, control lost. She bursts past me and I grab her. I feel her tension all through her. "You didn't fucking know him at all. You still don't. And you still couldn't care any fucking less about what you did to us. All for what? A fucking experiment? My brother is _not_ a lab rat, and I am not the little wheel in the cage for you to exercise him on and to throw away when he breaks it. You destroyed our family. We would have been fine, we would have been _fucking fine_ , you motherfucking, piece of shit, cock-sucking, douche-faced _fucks_."

During her rant I have wrangled the gun out of my sister's grasp and pulled her around to face me. I drop the scissors at my feet and use my now-free hand to hold her head against my shoulder. I'm surprised to see she isn't crying. She is hurt and furious with someone else for a change and so comes to me without argument. Deb's voice drops to a dark muttering, "Fuck them, Dex, fuck them both. Fuck. Just fucking kill them, please... You said you would." She is tense and breathes heavily into my shoulder. She doesn't protest about being faced away from the fight. I have her gun aimed at the Vogels and she trusts me to look after her.

"Well," Saxon says, eyes wide, "your sister really has a way of articulating how she feels, doesn't she?"

"We both have our ways," I agree, holding Deb's head tighter when she tenses again, wanting to retaliate. "Mine is killing people."

I take aim. This isn't the way I like to do my kills but it'll be fast.

"Dexter, no," Vogel appeals, distressed by the sight of me with a gun aimed at her. Hers is pointed down, useless. "Don't do this. Don't listen to her. She's upset, she doesn't understand. You and I have a history, Dexter. I didn't ruin anything; I _helped_ you. I _saved_ your family from what you were going to become. You know that. Harry didn't know what else to do for you – that's why he and I were introduced in the first place, so I could help him help you. You know you wouldn't have lasted without my influence. You would have snapped."

My finger was squeezing on the trigger but now I pause. _Introduced_? Someone introduced Harry and Evelyn _because of me_. Does that mean...?

"Your life is better for having me in it, and there's still so much more I can do for you," Vogel goes on in her best counsellor voice. "We can all get what we want here. This doesn't need to be a choice between us and Debra. There's no reason she can't leave right now and walk unharmed out the front door. She has nothing to fear from us if she can control herself. Think about it, Dexter. It makes _sense_ for us to stick together, work together. It's logical. We're the same. But you can't turn your back on me, Dexter. You need me."

The doctor makes some good points. The logical thing to do here would be to send my sister out of the house, to safety. It's my fault she's here. She can take care of herself but I'd rather she was not present, since I am still going to kill the mother and son and that could get messy. And having the Vogels as allies would be great for protection, alibis and information, in a hypothetical parallel universe where alliances between serial killers ever worked out for the benefit of anybody. Deb mistakes my pause as me heeding Vogel's words and pushes gently away from me to be able to look me in the face. I release my hold on her; she seems calmer. She doesn't say anything out loud but her lips form a silent word: _please_. She looks scared, uncertain of what I'll do. I don't know why. I told her I would take care of her, I told her I would kill Dr Vogel for her; that's what I'm here for. I hate her to be scared. I press the back of my hand against her stomach to direct her backwards, and shift so my body blocks hers from the Vogels.

"I already have what I need," I answer. "I got what I came for. Thanks anyway."

Again I'm about to fire when Deb leans over my shoulder and pushes my arm down, exclaiming, "Wait!" She keeps her hand on my arm and addresses her next words at Dr Vogel. "Just tell me one more thing. How did you do it? How did you kill our dad?"

I don't want to know, but Deb thinks she does, and so I wait with her for Vogel to deflect or talk around the issue. Even Saxon looks at her with interest. I suppose his mother's one confirmed murder is something he feels connection with. The doctor shakes her head.

"It's all water under the bridge now."

"Just fucking _tell me_ , you stupid old bitch!" Deb screams past my ear, and Vogel's eyes narrow with spite. The sharp side of her often-split personality comes to the fore.

"Harry Morgan would be embarrassed to see you now, Debra, and what a spoilt little brat you grew up to be," she tells my sister heartlessly. "He was a pathetic, predictable creature of habit, like you. When he was depressed he drank. There was half a bottle of whiskey in the pantry. Strong stuff; a few of his heart tablets mixed in didn't do much to affect the taste. It clearly did the trick."

"You broke into our _house_?" My sister's anger is weighed down with betrayal, and though I'd already deduced that this must have been the case, I am awash once again with negative feelings of my own. My father should have been safe from my demons in his own home. And my little sister was still living with him when he died – what would have happened if she had been home when Vogel broke in?

"As Daniel has mentioned, Morgans are notoriously poor at securing their homes."

"You killed my dad for wanting to fix Dexter," Deb says now, anger seeping away. "I wanted to fix him, too. Why didn't you kill me?"

"That's enough questions," Saxon says, but Vogel ignores him and answers anyway.

"I did try," she admits, "while you were here. I drove you as deep into your depression as you could go and waited for you to throw it in. I didn't expect you to try and take Dexter out with you. After that I considered trying again, but I decided, in the end..." She smiles very slightly. "You just weren't a great enough threat to warrant the effort."

Deb's hand slides off my arm. I see in her face that this blow has been harder than anything else the doctor has said or done. I hate that in her eyes I see confirmation, that she expected to hear this and that she hears a grain of truth to Vogel's words. The psychiatrist left Deb alive because she didn't think I could love her enough to ever want to change for her, while she clearly worried I might be persuaded by Harry. She thinks Deb's pull on me is less than my loyalty to our father. She thinks I only love my sister out of duty to my father, but she's wrong. Deb is my father's gift to me, a gift he should never have entrusted me with. I love Deb fully, for real, but I see now that I'm the only person present who really believes this.

That's an unbearable truth for me.

I squeeze the trigger and the gun fires; I'm already racing backwards, pushing Deb with me. I'm a pretty average shot and without taking the time to aim properly I miss Vogel's torso by a margin of a few inches and her wall gets another bullet hole. The doctor cowers and lets out a startled scream, but Saxon is propelled into action and throws his bolt at us. I grab Deb's head and pull it down with me as I duck. It spins through the space my face recently inhabited and hits a wall loudly further along the hallway.

"Stop!" Vogel shrieks at us, uncurling from her frightened cowering and pointing her gun again. "Don't you dare leave!"

I am in line with the cabinet – a few more steps until the stairs, and then I will get us out of this hellhole. Saxon leaps after us in pursuit. Moving forwards and alone, he covers more ground than I do, and stoops to grab the scissors I dropped. He raises them, ready to slash at my sister and me as soon as he is in reach, and behind him, face twisted with anger, Dr Vogel raises her gun and points it straight at me.

"Dexter, don't you _dare_ leave!"

So much is happening in such a short space of time. I am still a couple of steps short of the stairs. I am aware of my sister's hands on my shoulders and more than once, her feet beneath mine as I shuffle back and nearly trip on her. Saxon is impossibly close and closing in with unfair speed. Vogel's hand tightens on her revolver and I know before the sound reaches me that she has pulled the trigger. I know if I am hit it will happen before I hear the sound. I know I have used my whole year's worth of good luck already today in wishing my sister alive after thinking her dead.

Deb shoves me to the right and I go where she sends me. I bang front-first into the wall and my vision of the Vogels is blocked by the china cabinet. Saxon's inarticulate battle cry and Vogel's second gunshot fill my ears. For a tiny instant I am fearful – I am safe and Deb is not – but then as I begin to turn to look for her I feel her slam into my back and press her whole self against me, shielding me from the danger. I want to trade places with her but a heartbeat later there is a mighty crash as a third shot strikes the cabinet and the glass shatters.

We are showered in sharp fragments and both turn our faces away, Deb's nose and mouth pressed hard against the back of my neck. Instinctively I reach my hand back over my shoulder to cover and protect the rest of her face from the blasted shrapnel. A shard strikes the back of my leg, cutting me for certain. Glass and chips of wood batter the leather of my gloves; I am glad it's the gloves and not my sister's face, but I know something hurts her when I feel her sharp exhalation on my skin.

It doesn't stop her, though. My sister is unstoppable. She squeezes an arm between me and the wall, where my hand and the gun are trapped, pinned by our joined weight. She feels about – it would be indecent in any other situation – and finds the weapon. I open my fingers and let her pull it free. As the glass and shrapnel settles on the floor, Deb chooses her moment and stretches her arm around the shattered cabinet. She peers through the broken panels of it and fires twice, then ducks back and pushes me along the wall towards the stairs.

"Go, I'll cover you," she orders, but I was created only to piss her off, because I won't go. I won't leave her. I resist her second shove and turn to face her. She opens her mouth to argue but the window of opportunity closes and Vogel's fourth shot sounds. We flatten ourselves against the wall again, though we have both realised that the doctor is a god-awful shot.

It has been less than ten seconds since I first fired my shot yet I wonder what Saxon is doing. He should have reached this cabinet by now. I am unarmed and so I do not relish the upcoming instant in which he rounds the corner of the broken cabinet with the scissors. I at least now have my back against the wall and I am facing the direction from which he will arrive, but he doesn't. Beside me, eyes locked onto mine, Deb blinks, waiting as well.

The gunshots stop. There are no footsteps. There are no threatening noises.

"Daniel?"

Vogel's voice is strangled as she calls her son's name. I am deeply unsettled by it and extend my hand to Deb's gun, trying to tug it from her hands. She frowns quickly, a silent 'no, fuck off', and we both listen intently for clues as to what is happening beyond that cabinet.

" _Daniel_!" Vogel shrieks, and I hear the heavy thump of someone dropping to the carpet. I hear the revolver clatter to the floor. I chance leaning forward. What I see has me reaching for my sister's hand again, but this time to slide my fingers between hers and the gun so I can hold onto her. She shifts the weapon to her other hand and, immediate danger passed, we step out into view.

The former Daniel Vogel lays face-down in the hallway, mostly unmoving except for some involuntary twitches and with slowly expanding pools of blood haloing him. There is a small bleed from a bullet that must have grazed his outer thigh, not far from where I stabbed him earlier, but more noticeably, the blades of the sharp scissors are buried deep in the side of his neck. Vogel kneels before her dying son, hands hovering in the air above him, disbelieving and scared to touch him in case it becomes real. She is a different woman from the one who fired at us. She is a frightened old lady now, a lonely childless widow losing the last member of her family. Vogel watches helplessly as blood and life leave her son in fast pumps and in her face I see her inability to accept that the universe could have turned on her and hers so quickly. I squeeze Deb's hand, numb with graciousness. I was nearly Vogel. I was nearly the one watching my most precious person bleed out in front of me with nothing to be done to stop it, angry with how easily it could have been avoided and devastated that it wasn't.

Dr Vogel notices our reappearance and looks up at me. Her lips tremble with words she can't articulate. In her narrow eyes I see a broken soul. I am glad it's her soul that looks like that and not mine.

"My Daniel," she manages after several attempts to speak. "My son. You killed my Daniel."

I really can't see how she can justify that conclusion, considering, first of all, that the fucker clearly isn't dead yet, and also that when he _does_ die, it'll be as a result of a sharp blade that _he_ was carrying and seems to have fallen onto when his leg was struck by a bullet. Since my only shot in this exchange was the first one and everyone can see its impact site on the wall, I really can't be held responsible for Saxon's misfortune. Looking at the position of the wound, applying my nearly two decades of experience in this line of work and factoring in the reliability of the two possible shooters, I judge Saxon's shooter to have been Deb. A clean, non-lethal wound to bring down an assailant. A proper analysis would make me more certain but I'm reasonably sure that Vogel's wild shots couldn't have hit anyone unless she was aiming in the complete opposite direction.

"You killed my son," the doctor repeats, conviction re-empowering her voice. She's still looking at me, even though Debra's the one with the pistol. Maybe it's because I'm the one who was armed before we took cover and she assumes the following shots were mine, too, or maybe it's because I'm the one she knows better. I don't know, but I can see the blame inside her eyes, see her using it to pull herself back together the way I use Deb or darkness to focus me. "You were supposed to save him. Now he's _dead_."

"He's still fucking alive," Deb argues. Vogel totally ignores her. Without taking her hateful gaze from me she gropes across the floor for her gun, and seems not to see Deb raise hers in warning or hear her say, "Don't touch that. Don't move."

Unsteady like a drunk, Vogel staggers to her feet with her gun hanging limply in her hand. Alone on the floor, Saxon gasps bloodily and opens and closes his hand uselessly. I wonder if he's still present enough to feel jealous of me, standing here with someone who loves me enough to hold my hand when I want it while he waits hopelessly for someone to comfort him in his final, frightened moments.

"You killed him, you killed him," Vogel keeps saying, looking wildly between me and Saxon. "You killed him... You were meant to save him. You were meant to be my new Richard. You killed him..."

"No one killed him," I disagree, gesturing emotionlessly at the scissors. "It was just an accident."

"You _killed_ him!" Vogel's face twists with hate. "He was my son and you killed him. Everything was going to be better now, Richard. I was getting my sons back. You _ruined_ it all!"

Deb and I stare at her incredulously as she tears at her own hair, losing her grip on the moment. We don't bother to remind her that she ruined _our_ lives first, or that her beloved son was trying to kill _us_ when he fell upon his own sword. Or that I'm not Richard.

The doctor is quicker than either of us expects and brings her gun level with us before we can react. She fires and I am yanked to the ground by my quicker-thinking sibling. The bullet and the one that follows it go harmlessly astray somewhere in the hallway, burrowing deep into the plasterboard of the walls, and we hear the hollow click of an empty gun barrel. Vogel's out. When we look up we see her wild eyes flicker to the side and know she's contemplating escape. Deb raises her gun automatically but before her arm comes level with her shoulder she falters and cries out in pain. She drops forward and I lean close, trying to determine what's happened. Vogel uses the distraction to her advantage and the next thing we know, she's fleeing through one of the open doors. Mouth set with determination, Deb drops my hand and takes off after her. I see splotches of red on her back as she disappears after the doctor. I hope she's alright.

On the floor, where I am still crouched, Saxon gasps wetly for his last breaths. I crawl over, fascinated by the turn of events in the past few minutes. When I get close, his frightened blue eyes lock onto mine, trying to communicate his need for comfort. I have hated this man so intensely, especially in the past half hour, but right now I feel... sorry. He did not hurt my sister. He didn't steal her, he didn't wound her, he didn't violate her in any way. What he did was nothing short of brilliant. He did what I would have done, only better. He beat me at my own game – he worked out my weakness and used it against me. Well played, Saxon. Here before me lies a worthy adversary, and I feel unsatisfied with his unnecessary, undramatic end. Now, knowing he never intended to harm Deb, I feel immense respect for Oliver Saxon and feel regret that it is Vogel running away instead of him. I would have liked to kill him myself, perhaps after a great game of chase across the city complete with clues and red herrings, and I wouldn't even have felt that bad about him catching and killing me, considering his obvious level of talent and skill. It would have been like playing with Brian all over again. Perhaps there is sense to Vogel's insistence that Saxon and I are brothers of sorts. If I'd won, I could have given him a more fitting death, like I did my own brother. No rival as challenging as Saxon should die _by accident_. Though he is clearly dangerous, I am sorry that we won't be playing his frightening but skilful game any longer.

I also feel strangely grateful to him. _He_ killed the assassin that beat up my sister. Yes, he almost let her take the fall for it – I won't pretend I'm not impressed by the skill involved in fooling me into accusing my own sister of murder – but one of his last acts was to free her of this guilt. Instead he's given it to me, for my part in talking Deb into taking responsibility. That's okay, though. I can handle it. I can take the guilt and find a way to make it up to Deb later.

Deb didn't do it. Saxon did. And he tricked _me_. He used blood, my own language, to spell out a lie that I swallowed whole. Another game he beat me at.

Saxon's lips tremble as he tries to speak, and his damaged vocal cords do nothing as much of his inhaled air escapes through the hole in his throat, but I make out his attempt at talking: "Checkmate. You win."

I shake my head and touch his hand. I wear gloves but nonetheless the human contact seems to relax him, and his next breaths come shallower and steadier. I say, "No, you won this round. You played well. I'll see you one day on the other side, and we can play again then."

Saxon is almost out of seconds but my words reach him and he smiles. I wonder how long it's been since he felt a connection like the one we share right now. He killed his brother; his mother abandoned him. He's tried so hard to reforge that love without any real progress, but right now, as he breathes his last shaky breath, he's at peace.

I find Deb's phone in Saxon's pocket, and I stand and look down at Dr Vogel's dead son as Deb limps back into the hallway.

"Bitch got away," she informs me bitterly. She comes to me, walking with that same gait. I look at her feet and legs but determine no injury. She seems to be tensing her upper body more, perhaps favouring a sore shoulder or a stitch in her side, which is creating the awkward walk. She nods at the body while I hand her back the phone she came here for. "What about him?"

"Gone," I confirm. We both stare at the gruesome corpse, though I don't know what Deb's thinking. I wonder whether she wishes, like I do, that it were Vogel lying here dead instead. Dr Vogel is the one Deb wants to see killed. Is she disappointed?

"Fuck," she comments, finally. I look up at her. Wincing slightly, she picks a small shard of glass from her arm. I see her blood on its point.

"Fuck," I agree. How things have changed so much in the last few minutes! I thought I would never get to hear her say that again, but now she's here, she's alive, she's with me and everything is good again. She saved me. Was it really less than twelve hours ago that we broke each other's hearts and shattered each other's worlds? I love her so much right now and I step over to hold her.

"Fuck, no, fuck off!" she snaps, shoving me away. Confused, arms still open, I stop where I am. "What the fuck just happened, Dexter? Why are we here? I thought you had this Vogel shit under control?"

"I..." I struggle to think of an explanation that makes sense, because I don't really understand what she's asking. What happened? I thought you were dead and you aren't, problem solved. What other details does she need? "I came to help you..."

"Help me? You could have helped me by _answering your fucking phone_ , bro. I was worried. I thought fucking Vogel was going to try to lure you off somewhere. And I was right, wasn't I?"

"I didn't know it was you calling!" I protest. "And you didn't put your name at the end of the text, how was I meant to know?"

Deb holsters her gun, wincing with pain at having to lift her shoulder. "Fuck, I forgot you wouldn't recognise the number. I don't know why I didn't think of that. But I called a fuck-tonne of times and you didn't answer, and I called your house and Jamie said you were having a freak-out on the balcony and that you ran off to the car when she came to get you. I was going to meet at your apartment but I figured I was too late and might as well get my ass over here and wait for you to show up. I've been sitting in the car – how the hell did you get in here without me seeing?" She glares at me. "What the fuck were you thinking? Why would you come here? You were on speakerphone, you knew Vogel had visited me and that the bitch was trying to drive a wedge between us. It was obviously a trap. God, you're such an idiot!"

I stare at her, disbelieving. All the angry and frightened things I've been thinking about her today are exactly what she's been thinking about me.

"I thought they'd taken you," I say, fetching my phone from my pocket. "Look at what they sent me."

I show her the photo and her frown melts away. She studies it for a long moment before looking at me again.

"Holy mother of fuck," she breathes, horrified. "He got one. Where?"


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. But if I did... *shakes fist*

I take her meaning immediately and step over Saxon's body to lead my sister into the room I thought I'd lost her in. I freeze in the doorway, momentarily confronted by the vision. Minutes ago this sight was the end of my world. Now... it's just a dead stranger. Deb rushes past me to check the woman on the bed but I stay back, noting the congealed edges of the blood pool. She'll be cold. She was probably already dead when Saxon took the picture. I am again overwhelmingly grateful that this poor prostitute has died instead of my sister.

Deb feels for a pulse but finds nothing, and brushes the long dark hair off the face to see who it is. Neither of us recognises her. I see why Saxon splayed the hair across her face the way he did. Up close, the dead woman is clearly not Deb. She's younger, less pretty, lines from smoking beginning to crease the skin around her mouth. But he did a good job otherwise of choosing his decoy. She has the same length hair with the lightened ends, long limbs, small breasts and bony frame. He even dressed her eyes with makeup like Deb's, which he ensured was visible in the photograph and which added nicely to his illusion.

All the same, I consider now, I should have known as soon as I got here that she wasn't my Deb. I recall the void of feeling as I climbed the stairs. I'm quite sure I don't believe in telepathic bonds but I know that Deb's effect on me is something magical, and even before I saw the dead woman I'd noticed the lack of her _pull_. And besides that, Deb said last night that _I_ am the one killing her. If she has to die it should be by me, and I'll never do it, so by that very sound logic she should live forever.

"Fuck, fuck," Deb mutters, stepping away and running a hand through her hair. "We asked them to call us if they noticed any of their friends missing. No one fucking called!"

I see the guilt on her face and know she feels responsibility for this death. It's in no way her fault, of course, but it's for an unfortunate likeness to her that Saxon chose this girl. I cross the room, intending to pull her close and comfort her, but again she pushes me away, angry.

"Don't touch me," she says demandingly, sidestepping. "This is your fault. Isn't it? Saxon did this because of you. How many people need to get hurt because of you, Dexter?"

"He was trying to send me a message," I confirm, hurt by her last question, to which she mutters, "I knew it." I go on, "He was trying to get my attention and draw me out."

"Well, it worked, didn't it, dumbass?"

"Yeah, it did," I reply hotly, getting annoyed with her now. "I thought she was you."

Deb is surprised, and _I'm_ surprised to realise that she hadn't made this connection yet. She's been so focussed on the victim that it didn't occur to her that I might have had a legitimate reason for wanting to walk into this trap.

"Me?" she asks, looking back at the dead hooker. "She looks nothing like me!" But I can see in her eyes that this changes things. I was not just coming to Vogel's to be stupid and to make Deb's life difficult. I was coming to save her. I press my advantage.

"She looked enough like how I imagine you would look raped and murdered to motivate me to get over here to drag your ass out," I respond brutally. She flinches as though I've struck her. "You went fucking _off_ at Vogel and then didn't call me back. I called you a million times. I rang Angel and he said you'd left. I got this awful fucking photo," I remind her, throwing her my phone, "from _your_ fucking phone. I broke a dozen road laws trying to get here in time to save you. I'm sorry some poor hooker is dead because I'm such a predictable idiot and Saxon knew how to play me like a puppet straight into his hands, but you know what? I'm _glad_ she's dead if it means you aren't. And anyway," I add angrily, striding over to her when I notice her now-shaky fingers struggling to unlock the screen to view the picture. That left arm, the one she couldn't shoot with, seems clumsy and weak. I slide the lock for her and grab her hand to hold it immediately before her face so she has to look at what scared me so badly. "You're no better. You knew they were playing us and you still came, too."

"Good thing I did or you'd be dead now," Deb shoots back at me. I feel her hand trembling in mine, and with surprise realise that mine is shaking, too. The adrenaline is receding and our bodies just need to adjust. "You were getting your ass kicked."

"I was not," I argue, unable to resist defending my pride against her accusations, classic sibling rivalry. "You obviously didn't see any of what preceded that. I was holding my own." I shake my head, getting off track. "That's beside the point. You said it yourself, this serial killer shit isn't your world. You should know by now to stay out of it. You should have stayed at the station and let me deal with it."

"I couldn't just let them get you," she snaps, angry and upset. She wrenches her hand away with less power than usual and I hold on tight and won't let her go. We drop my phone. "I had to come. I had to protect you."

"No," I disagree furiously, though I am extremely touched by her words, " _I_ have to protect _you_. That's how this works." Deb growls in frustration and yanks again on her hand, trying to free it. I won't release her. "I'm the fuck-up. I'm the one that makes everything go wrong. I'm the one that brings all the bad luck into our lives, so it's _my_ responsibility to clean it up. Not yours. You're not the little girl with the vacuum cleaner anymore, Deb," I add, and she stops trying to pull away. "My mess, Dad's mess – they're not your problem. You don't need to clean up after anyone but yourself." And even that, I'll always begrudgingly help out with.

"I'm a fuck-up sometimes, too," Deb insists, slightly defensively. "I screw up everything I'm part of. And I'm old enough to take care of myself, make my own stupid choices and take responsibility for them at the other end. I'm not a fucking princess, I don't need you to baby me."

"Most of your stupidest choices are ones I've backed you into," I tell her. I think of her keeping my secret, killing La Guerta, trying to confess, burning down that church, sabotaging cases to protect me, the drugs, quitting her job... All of it my fault. I feel that now-familiar sensation of guilt gnawing at me. "They're at least as much my problem as yours. I'm the one who should be cleaning them up. You should go," I realise now, and indicate the door behind me. "You're right. This scene is another of my messes. I'll deal with it."

"Fuck no," Deb disagrees, finally getting her hand away from me and digging in her pocket for her own phone. "I'm calling this shit in. This girl deserves some justice, and fucking Vogel is going to get what's coming to her, one way or another."

"Deb, don't," I say, trying to take her phone away, but she steps back and tries to fend me off with her elbow while both hands work to initiate a call. The motion proves too painful and she gasps, doubling over. "Deb, what?" I demand, following as she continues to back away. She tells me to fuck right off and turns away, swiping at me once more as she straightens. Again her movement fails and she drops the arm, wincing and cursing continuously under her breath. When she has her back to me I see the cause of her pain. "Fucking hell, Deb. You're hit."

"I am not," she disputes. "It's just a bit of glass."

Several shards of broken glass protrude from the back of her shirt, haloed by small rings of bright red blood, with two larger ones of more than an inch looking particularly nasty. The largest is a rough triangle of glass that can't be far from her kidney, but the long, thin fragment jutting from under her shoulder blade has the biggest and wettest ring of blood and looks like it could be the deepest. I can picture her trapezius muscle grating on that sharp edge every time she tries to use the arm. An awkward place even on an uninjured person, I realise that Deb won't be able to dislodge the foreign items on her own.

"Come here and I'll get them out," I say authoritatively, approaching. Deb, angry because of her physical pain but taking it out on the nearest and easiest target, says, "Just leave me alone, you fuck! You let me think I'd killed that guy, and I _didn't_. You _told me_ that I did. I hate you."

"You do not. Hold still," I order, reaching for her shoulder and preparing to remove the glass. She struggles away, breath ragged with pain. She has nowhere to go except into the corner between the mirrored doors of the wardrobe and the window, and I follow her there, worry with her transforming as always into frustration. "Debra! Hold. Fucking. Still." I grab at her and she strikes out with her injured arm, even though it hurts her. She is still yelling at me that she hates me and calling me all kinds of names. I ignore it all. I catch her upper arm and force her around so she's facing away, and when she tries again to escape, I push her roughly into the wall and pin her there with a forearm across the back of her neck. I have to press my hip into the small of her back and lock one of my legs across the back of hers to really ensure she won't go anywhere. She struggles and pulls and reaches back to hit me and screams and rants and curses me with every breath, but she's stuck. "Jesus fuck, Debra, you are such a pain in the ass."

I assess the damage done to her by the glass and decide to leave alone the two biggest shards for now. I don't know how deep they are and removing them could unblock a serious bleed or even nick another artery. The bled-dry hooker is only metres away and my thoughts touch on my horrific dream where Deb removed the knife and bled out all over my hands.

I was rougher than intended with Deb trying to restrain her but I am mindful of this – and the fact that even now, I have her trapped like I would a victim – and try to atone for it by being extremely gentle as I carefully dislodge each piece of glass from her back. The first six are small, approximately thumbnail-sized, and come away without problem. Deb quickly calms down, or at least stops fighting and screaming and just seethes silently. I lightly run my hand through her hair, shaking loose at least another dozen tiny pieces of glass and wood chips. Under her hair I see scratches on her neck and ear from the spray of glass, tiny injuries that I didn't notice before. I wish once again that it was me shielding her from the gunshots and the shattering cabinet instead of the way it went down.

I find another couple of little bits of glass in Deb's arm and pinch them free with my fingertips. With only the big two remaining, I reach down and tap Deb's clenched fist.

"Hold these," I instruct her, tipping the glass pieces into her hand when she opens it. I keep my voice low and even as I explain, "There's two more, big ones. They could be really deep. It could hurt a lot when I take them out. I need to have a closer look at them before I do anything about them. Are you alright so far?"

Deb nods once, tightly, though I suppose that's to be expected since she's squashed face-first into a wall. I tug gently on her shirt, pulling it free from where she's tucked it into her jeans, taking excessive care not to jostle the shards of glass still wedged into her.

"Don't move," I warn, and slowly remove my arm from the back of her neck. She does as she's told and stays still. It's a much easier job with two hands. The glass shards have of course sliced through the fabric of her shirt so I tear the holes a bit bigger to be able to lift the material away and over the wedges of glass. When the shirt is rolled all the way up and her back is bare except for the strap of her bra, I step away, taking my weight off her and shifting to see better.

"How bad?" she asks curtly. I hesitate – objectively speaking, all these little cuts and the two slices of glass sticking out like wings, bleeding down her back, look quite terrible. But I don't say that. I closely examine both concerning wounds. Like icebergs, it's impossible to determine exactly how much glass lies beneath the surface of her skin, but with the lower one I can tell from the way the glass moves when she breathes that it's only shallow. No organs hit. The thin shard in her shoulder, however, does not move. It's deep. Fighting me off before has aggravated the wound and its bleed is quite steady. A stream of dark blood dribbles down alongside her spine, but that tells me the glass only pierced veins, carrying slow-moving old blood under low pressure. It can come out; in fact, it should – it's impeding her range of motion. I explain all of this calmly to my sister, and add that she'll need to throw the shirt away. She only thinks for a second. "Pull them out."

"Tell me if it hurts," I say, and pinch the lower shard between my forefinger and thumb. Its jagged edges snag on Deb's skin as I slide it backwards and out, and Deb's breaths catch, too. Her whole body tenses and I stop. "Does it hurt?"

"It doesn't hurt," she lies. I am about to argue with her but I bite my tongue. Telling the truth and admitting to the pain isn't going to decrease it any, nor will it change the fact that the glass blades need to come out. I take a breath and warn her that I'm going to keep going. After that the glass slides straight out with an ooze of blood. I lean aside to place it on the windowsill, and take the little pieces out of Deb's hand to add them to the collection.

"Last one," I tell her, lightly laying my fingertips on the edges of the thin shard, but even that pressure is too much for my little sister's frayed nerves. She whimpers pitifully and tries to wrench aside. I automatically catch her arms and push, holding her in place against the wall. She's practically in the corner by now. This time she doesn't fight me but I can feel her fighting against a sob that threatens to escape her. She lets loose a string of mismatched swear words instead. The last thing she wants is to start crying. I lean close and softly shush her, stroking her arms with my thumbs. "It's alright. I know it hurts."

"It _doesn't_ hurt," she insists through gritted teeth. I smile despite the situation and release her.

"You're a fucking liar," I mock lightly, carefully getting a different grip on the glass. She inhales sharply but doesn't move.

"You're a fucking... fucktard," she retorts. "It doesn't hurt. Just get it over with." I can hear the tightness in her voice. I pull quickly on the glass, getting it most of the way out before a tooth of its serrated edge catches, and she cries out and bursts into tears. "Oww, stop, stop! It hurts, Dexter, stop, you're hurting me..."

"I've stopped! I've stopped!"

Deb hits the wall with her hands, unable to hold in the sobs now. I keep my fingers on the glass so it doesn't move or make her pain any worse, and let my head fall forward to rest against the side of hers. My sister is not a crier, so I know it must absolutely cane. Seeing her in pain hurts me, even more so when it's my own fault she's like this. I'm the one dragging jagged glass against her nerves, hurting her even while I'm trying to love her. Wasn't that the message behind the dreams? Even last night's horrendous one. I'm the reason she's here in the first place, and I'm the one Vogel was shooting at, and I'm the one who should have looked for and noticed these injuries as soon as I knew she'd been hit by something, and my attempts to hold her and treat the wounds are the reason the wounds are worse than they started. So it really is entirely my fault. I deserve the pain that comes with hurting her, but she doesn't deserve to be hurt.

"It didn't hurt this much when they went in," she comments miserably. She turns her head to look at me, and I see the tears in her eyes. Her mouth is open as she pants for breath through her decreasing sobs and I see red on her lower lip. Frowning, I use my free hand to catch her chin so I can look. It's blood, just a little bit, and some more on her front tooth. She's bitten down on her lip so hard she's cut it. Tenderly, upset, I wipe the blood off her lip with my thumb. I can't read the expression in her eyes through the tears she's trying to blink away.

"It's alright," I promise in a whisper. "It's okay. It didn't hurt so much before because you were pumped full of adrenaline but now you're coming down. I know it hurts a lot." This time she nods. With the back of my hand I brush some of the tears from her face. "Fucking Vogel hurt you, but I've got you now. It's nearly done. You're alright." I reach down and take Deb's hand. "I'm still going to get it out, so I want you to take my glove off and bite on that if it hurts, okay?"

Deb nods and two fat tears spill over her lashes and roll down her cheeks. She says she's not a baby but she is, she's my baby sister. I squeeze her hand and go back to my task. I feel her shaky fingers begin their task of tugging my glove off.

Either she acts out of spite or I don't give her enough time, possibly both, because I immediately resume pulling the glass free of her trapezius muscle and she shrieks and stuffs my whole hand into her mouth. It's my turn to shout with pain when she bites down on the fleshy part between my thumb and wrist, the leather of the glove muffling her cry. The glass comes out of her and I drop it; her jaw unlocks, she gasps and I rip my hand away from her.

My hand sore and throbbing, I am understandably annoyed with her. I pull the glove back to see that while she hasn't broken the skin, there is an obvious indentation of a row of nice straight adult teeth. _Bitch_. How to explain that one? Between me and the wall, Deb is still shaking as she battles to get a grip on her traitorous body, her body that feels pain and reacts naturally and normally despite her insistence that she's impervious to hurt, clearly a great betrayal. She's weak for now, but she'll be strong again soon. My irritation with her for biting me urges me to have a go at her right now, to take advantage of this rare occasion on which I can confront her and expect to win.

"Dex," she whispers, and my anger vanishes. I listen as she swallows a few times and says, so softly, "I'm sorry. I don't hate you."

I wonder how I could ever be angry with this precious person. I gently roll her shirt down over the cuts and watch as the new blood soaks into the fabric.

"I know. I'm sorry, too," I answer, just as quietly. I'm sorry for so much. "How is it?"

Experimentally, she rolls her shoulder in its socket. It seems more mobile, less strained.

"It's better," she admits. I'm glad. I slide my arms around her and snuggle close against her side without moving her. I find her stomach bare, the shirt still bunched at the front, but I enjoy her warmth against my arm. Warm equals alive.

I kiss the side of her head. Last night we broke each other's hearts and I wondered whether we could ever be fixed. I kiss the same place a second time. An hour ago I thought she was ignoring me. I kiss her ear, the unscratched one. Half an hour ago I thought she was stolen, hurt, dying. The rawness of the memory sees me raise my arm to cradle her head in my hand while I kiss her temple. Fifteen minutes ago I thought she was dead. Gone. Lost. It would have ended me if I'd overpowered the Vogels, come back in here and had to actually face the reality of her death. There is no me without her. What would I have done? Call the police, watch them cart her off on a gurney with a white cloth covering her? Steal her body and throw her into the ocean like I do with everyone else whose lives I take away?

I could throw myself in after her.

All prospects repulse me and I am glad I don't need to make those decisions today. My arm around Deb's waist tightens and I clutch her close, eager to be as near to her as I can be, and my other hand weaves through her soft hair as I press increasingly desperate kisses to her hair, her ear, her tearstained face, her eyelids, her neck. When my lips touch her neck she automatically tilts her head away and I can kiss more of her. My mouth must open on the next kiss because I can taste her skin, and with my tongue I feel her racing pulse. She's alive, she's here, she's _mine_.

"I thought you were dying," I confess between kisses. "It was like in my dreams, and I couldn't do anything about it. It's the worst thing, the very worst thing. I thought you were going to die because of me."

"I told you, didn't I?" Deb says softly. "That's not going to happen."

"Yeah, but you're a liar sometimes," I remind her, kissing along her jawbone. My fingers in her hair find a stray fragment of wood and I flick it away. She's still side-on to me, the front of her body still against the wall but her eyes on me. "I was so worried. I thought they were going to take you away; I couldn't let that happen. You're mine. You belong to me."

"Dexter?" she asks, nervous and confused. My mouth is on her throat; probably not a typical locale for a kiss from a brother to a sister but I don't think about that. The uncertainty in her voice is what has me pull away to look at her. My grip on her is so tight that she struggles to turn in it to face me.

"I heard what you said to Vogel," I add, disentangling my fingers from her hair to stroke it lightly, "on the phone. You said I'm yours."

She stares at me for a long, charged moment, trying to read me. Apparently coming to a conclusion she reaches for me, her mouth coming for mine. I realise suddenly what's going on and react spontaneously, leaning my head quickly back out of range and catching her wrist before she can get a hold on me. She tries once to twist her hand free and I push it back against the wall. I can see in her eyes that she doesn't know what to make of this as she tries again to kiss me. I keep back and don't let her. I don't know what difference it makes. I don't know how a kiss on the lips differs from what I was just doing, which, I realise with a sinking feeling, was exactly what I'd promised myself I would no longer do.

She must see my realisation in my eyes because she groans in frustration and smacks my chest with her free hand. "Don't! Don't be such a fucking tease! You either want it or you don't. You can't keep doing this – haul me right out to the edge of the plank and then turn and walk back without me. You just can't. It isn't fair!"

She stamps her foot like a child and when she accidently stomps on my foot, she does it twice more for effect. She glares at me. I visualise her metaphor and know she's spot-on. That's exactly what I've been doing. It makes me feel low. I should leave her be. I should just keep my hands off her.

Still, when she slides her foot up the wall to get leverage to shove me or just to knee me where it'll hurt most, the knowledge that I shouldn't touch her isn't enough to stop me grabbing her knee, pushing it aside and shifting closer to press my hip into her thigh, pinning her again to the wall. Her eyes widen with surprise at what can only be taken as a sexual advance. Which is _not_ what I meant. The action is clearly out of line, too aggressively intimate to be familial, and I immediately know I've managed to make things, somehow, even worse. " _Fuck_!" I have one arm still tight around her waist; my other hand holds her wrist prisoner. My stomach and pelvis are firmly against hers. I know that if an outsider were to walk into the room right now they would never guess from our pose that we're siblings. Aside from removing clothes, there is only one step between what we are doing right now and what we did in my dream last night. I can see how I have misled Deb. I realise how inappropriate my display of affection was. I can even hear my own words replaying in my head and know how they must sound to someone waiting to hear exactly that.

"I'm sorry, Deb," I murmur miserably. I've done it again. I've screwed everything up, like she said I would. She shakes her head, eyes, hazel like mine, deep with resentment.

"You _always_ do this," she accuses, and I hate myself. I look down, ashamed. What's _wrong_ with me? I tell her one thing, do the complete opposite. "Always. You get so close and then run away from me." I force myself to meet her gaze and accept the negativity there. She is closer than I thought. I expect to see betrayal or hurt in her but instead I see challenge.

The leg I pinned to the wall twines around the back of both of mine. I waste my time reaching down to stop her; in that moment her free arm, the injured one, snakes behind me and locks across the back of my shoulders, yanking me even closer. There's more strength in that hold than there ought to be considering the gash in her back. My nose bumps into her cheek and our eyes are so close that there is nothing else to look at. Our mouths are so near that when she breathes I feel the warm exhalation on my lips and I know that the air I breathe in is air that has already been inside her. There is a strange appeal to that concept, the idea that we are sharing life, that I am getting from her what I need to survive and she is getting the same from me.

Maybe it's not just a concept. Maybe that's how it is. I definitely live off her but maybe I am a little bit good for her, too? I mean, I'm practically breathing into her right now, and it's apparently not poisonous. She's still alive, not choking, still breathing it in. In, out... Despite all I do to her that is wrong, maybe I do some things right sometimes and somehow she uses that? I used to be an alright brother, back before she knew what I am. She lived off my love back then. Maybe she still does, although clearly it is a much harder task these days.

I release my jealous hold on Deb's wrist and slide my hand upward until our palms match. I just keep getting things wrong, but that shouldn't be happening. I have this wonderful person in my life; it should not be this hard to appreciate her and treat her properly and let her know, all the time, how special she is. She is _everything_. If I weren't such a screw-up I would be able to show her that. If I were normal, like she thinks I could have been, I would know how to be a good brother who protects his little sister from crazies and says the right thing at the right time. I would know not to lead my sister on.

Still... She doesn't blink. She holds my gaze captive. Logically I know I ought to take my hands off her and step well away before she tries to change things but when she does nothing, I find myself trapped by indecision. There shouldn't be a decision to make! I should get away. But I don't. I am weak and hurt by all of the awful things she's said and I've done, and her allure is stronger than I am right now. This close, I feel safe, whole and content, though also on edge and sickeningly exhilarated, like we are about to tandem jump without a parachute and hope for the best. I don't want to move away and lose that safeness, not after I came so close today to being without her for always, but I also don't want for us to fall needlessly from a perfectly good aeroplane on a whim, hoping for the thrill of our lives but most likely crashlanding in different places and, broken and ruined, unable to crawl back to each other.

I don't think I could live with that.

But I don't pull away.

Why? What's wrong with me? For once I know what's right and I'm not doing it. Is there something else?

Deb is _so_ close. I realise now that she is not going to do anything. She is going to let me make the call. I feel the heat of her lips radiating against my own, knowing she is only millimetres away. It would be nothing to close that gap. Yet it would mean risking everything. I have so much to lose – too much – but now I am starting to wonder. Deb is better than me. Maybe she knows something I don't? Maybe she knows we can survive it? Or maybe she just thinks she does. Maybe she's wrong. Maybe she isn't. But what if she is?

Her lips brush mine as she whispers, "What are you waiting for?"

Both her question and the sensual touch of our mouths are unexpected and I am frozen. It's my move and I need to make a decision. I know my decision already. I already made it. I don't change. I don't want her to. I don't want _us_ to. Yet I am still here, perilously close to ruining everything. What am I waiting for?

"I don't know," I admit finally, voice as hushed as hers. Deb's eyes are still locked with mine. I wonder what she sees in them. What I see in hers scares me. I see her desire, her want for change. I am terrified of her in this moment. She is stronger than me – her heart is so full and so open – and if she wants to she can enforce this change. If not now then later, another time, she'll have other opportunities. I know her and I know me. I'm her idiot brother that keeps accidentally offering myself to her, and eventually she's just going to take it without asking. "I don't know what's happening."

We remain in place for a painfully long moment. Finally Deb blinks and breaks our connection. When her eyes open, a millisecond later, all of those scary emotions have vanished, hidden away. She relaxes in my grip and leans back against the wall. I release her hand and it drops away. The arm around my shoulders loosens and her hand slides along to rest listlessly on my arm.

"It's okay, Dexter," she assures me, without any feeling at all. An emotionless Deb is no Deb at all, and I am uncomfortable with her hollow tone. I straighten, removing my weight from her leg. She's able to lower her foot to the floor again. "I know what's happening. This is what you do. It's not your fault – you're a chair, and I keep forgetting that you'll never be a table."

I never understood that metaphor before now. I look away so she won't see that she's hurt me. I need her but I'm not what _she_ needs. I'm useless, redundant. Worse; I don't just take up space, I cause hurt and harm every time she comes into contact with me. An electric chair, with no 'off' switch, and she's chained to me. I can't stop hurting her.

"I love you," I say, for whatever it's worth. I look back at her, anticipating 'I hate you' in return and determined to make myself see the truth of that statement in her face. Her eyes are empty.

"I love you, too," Deb answers tiredly, lighting a lone candle of hope inside me, "but you don't know what that means."

I wish I could argue with her. I wish I had something to say that would be valid to her, but I know there's nothing. There's nothing I can say to prove otherwise, and every time I have tried to show her I have only dug myself a deeper hole. I _do_ love her, and I know she knows it. It's real. But it's not good enough. It's not a normal, bright and heart-warming love that either of us can appreciate and understand. It's something different and alien. I keep telling myself I don't want change yet I don't really understand what I have. I think Deb might be right. I love her and I need her and I know her better than anyone else but beyond that I don't understand our complicated relationship. We are so much more to one another than just foster siblings.

A distant wailing catches our attention. Deb frowns, weirdness and lust forgotten. "Is that a siren?"

"Ambulance," I recognise. I glance at the dead girl on the bed. I'm once again deeply grateful that my sister was not the one in the photo. Even if the cut was fresh at the moment I got the text, it is unlikely she would have survived this long. What an embarrassing response time for our public emergency services. Lesson learned: do not listen to paranoid ghosts wanting you to call for ambulances for dying sisters, because apparently you can save them more effectively by rescuing them and driving them to emergency room yourself. I do not voice this to Deb – I don't expect she'll see the humour, plus she'll probably rewrite the lesson as being _answer your fucking phone_. Instead I say, "They took their sweet time."

" _You_ called them? When? Your phone's been on the floor this whole time," she adds, gesturing past me at the iPhone in the middle of the room. I go to retrieve it and slide it back into my pocket.

"On my way over here. What?" I demand, when she gives me an incredulous look. "I was scared for you. I thought, looking incapacitated as you did," I wave a hand at our dead hooker, "you might appreciate the medical attention."

"So you called 911? While on your way to commit a double homicide?!"

"I didn't _say_ that's what I was doing."

"Jesus fucking Christ, Dexter," Deb exclaims, running hands through her hair as the siren gets closer. "Yeah, I appreciate you wanting to save my life and all that, but seriously, you choose _today_ to grow a conscience and put your faith in experts? The one time we _really_ don't want their help?"

"I'm not going to apologise for trying to do something right by you for once – I thought it was your _life_ on the line," I answer coldly, and she makes an effort to rein in her rising panic.

"Okay, I'm sorry, you're right," she amends, stepping out of the corner to look around the room, "it was the right thing to do, but how the hell do we explain all this? There are two fucking dead people. There's blood _everywhere_ , bullets in the goddamn walls..."

"You go," I say automatically. "I'll fix this. I'll deal with it. You should go."

"No," Deb disagrees forcefully. " _You_ should go. It's a little obvious I was here, don't you think?" She turns back to the wall I pressed her into – my eyes first cling to her back and the deep red stains where the glass pierced her – and we both note the smears of blood across the wallpaper. My stomach sinks; I don't have any bleach with me, and though I'm sure I'll find it somewhere in the house, there isn't time to dismantle this crime scene as fully as needed to erase Deb's presence here. "Not to mention four bullets in the walls that are going to be a perfect match to _my_ gun."

"We can both run," I suggest, though I know it's a waste of breath. Deb would never do it. She would never turn away from her own mistakes and responsibilities and flee. She turns back to me with a roll of her eyes, nursing her sore arm as the adrenaline recedes and the muscle pain starts to really set in.

"Yeah, off to fucking fairyland, where you clearly come from, dipshit," she snaps. "You need to get the fuck out. I'll think of something to say."

"Alright, I'll go," I agree finally, thinking fast, "but first, listen..."

I talk non-stop. I quickly walk her through a mythical version of events in which she turned up at the house to collect her phone from Vogel thinking it was an innocent mistake, heard screaming and violence inside and entered to intervene. I remove the bolt from the story, burying it in my pocket, knowing it has my DNA all over it.

"This is so fucked," Deb mutters as we hurry down the stairs. The siren blares outside as the ambulance pulls up. "Now what? Vogel's on the run and probably going to slash our fucking necks in our sleep, if she doesn't just go straight to the feds and confess everything, of course. God, _fuck_ , I _so_ wanted to shoot that bitch. Saxon's dead and you didn't even get to plant Hannah's hair and blood on anything. Everyone's still going to be looking for her. This was all meant to go down while I wasn't in town. So much for your plans, bro."

"We'll need to re-evaluate," I admit, and Deb sighs.

"Head off to work in the morning like a normal person and before lunch I'm already embroiled in my serial killer brother's latest fucking disaster. Oh!" She stops one stair before the bottom and I try to stop beside her, rocking back on my feet awkwardly. She grabs my arm, eyes wide. "Dex – you're a fucking serial killer!"

"Yeah-"

"And Vogel made you. She's got notes and fucking _tapes_ of every single conversation-"

"With Dad," I realise, pulse speeding up to match the panic I feel from her. Outside, the doors of the ambulance open loudly. She nods urgently.

"And _us_ ," she reminds me in a terrified stage whisper. "You said she had notes on you. She could have notes on me, too. This is a motherfucking crime scene, Dexter! Our own department is going to tear this place apart and find _everything_ and-"

"Stop," I order, grasping her arms and forcing her to look at me. "Nothing's going to happen. Where are the tapes?"

"They're... They're not tapes, they're CDs, in this..." Flustered by the impending arrival of the paramedics, she struggles to explain, hands gesturing wildly. "This box thing, near her computer. There's shitloads of them inside."

"I'm on it. You go, deal with them," I instruct, jerking my thumb in the direction of the door as I head for the study, "and keep them out of sight of the back door. I'll slip out and drive back around like I just arrived, alright?"

"Yep," my sister agrees as she goes to the front door, but I can see that she's still very unsure. Sneaking around and misdirecting the law is not her game.

"Debra," I call softly. She pauses with her hand on the doorknob. "Get them to check your shoulder. It needs stitches."

"Fuck you. It does not."

"It does. And, Deb: You've got this."

"Good thing I do, or where the fuck would you be?" she retorts, and goes through the door. I take a second to inhale a deep breath of relief. I didn't imagine the hint of sarcastic playfulness in her voice. She probably hasn't forgiven me, she probably still isn't talking to me – and between last night's soul-wrenching conversation, being shot at by my enemies, me shoving her into a wall like a bully and making her cry and then the epic near-mistake that followed, I don't blame her for being mad – but she's prepared to act like things are normal between us. I'll take that. Back to square one, the cycle waiting to restart, ready for the next round.

I duck into the study and close the door. Through it, I hear my sister's voice as she leads the paramedics inside, explaining in a crisp and professional manner what crazy situation she walked into. I turn on the computer and find the CDs quickly while I'm waiting for the laptop to load. There aren't shitloads, but there are a few. I take the ones labelled with my father's name. Once the computer is ready I easily find Dr Vogel's patient files. I leave alone the majority, thinking it might be helpful to incriminate her and keep her on her toes as she tries to avoid the police, but highlight those with my name or my sister's. I am sorely tempted to read what Vogel wrote about her sessions with Deb – I feel my face tighten with hatred as I recall the doctor admitting that while she was assuring me that she was helping my sister recover from PTSD, she was actually driving her deeper into depression. What kind of human being does that to another? Especially a vulnerable one?

A psychopath, I remind myself glumly, and I drag the files to the recycle bin. Someone like me. Someone like the woman who built me. Evelyn Vogel is a psychopath, like all of her patients. She's just cleverer, more successful at hiding what she is, than those she treats. That's why no one noticed before now what a creep she is. It explains a lot.

I hesitate a long moment with my mouse hovering above the option to empty the recycle bin. I am not interested in the doctor's notes on me, but those written about Deb... Could I learn something about my sister from what the psychiatrist wrote? Could I improve things with that kind of information? Could I learn something about Vogel and what Vogel intends to do to us by reading those notes? How badly would Deb kick my ass if she found out I'd read them?

I make a deal with myself. I'll keep them – I find a USB drive and save all of the files on us both – but I won't read Deb's ones. I'll let her read them, if she's okay with that, and have her tell me whether there's anything useful that we can use against the witch that ruined our lives.

I listen out for the sound of footsteps and voices as I slowly reopen the study door. The hall is deserted, so I slink through the house and head out the back door. I close it softly behind me, check no one is looking, and leap back over the fence. It's less graceful than what I managed only fifteen or so minutes ago. The beating I took from Saxon is catching up with me and my body is starting to feel achy. When I land in the next yard there are no demands of angry neighbours or barking dogs, which is good. I try not to pick up too much speed in my haste to return to Deb's car. I glance casually up and down the street. There are four other cars, three red and one dark, but as far as I can tell, no people around. It _is_ mid-morning on a Monday, I suppose. People are all at work, at school, out and about. I unlock Deb's BMW and throw the CDs onto the floor of the passenger side. I rip off the gloves and hide them, the lock picking kit, the bolt and the USB in the glove box. I turn the car on and check my phone. There are more missed calls from Deb's decoy phone, probably from when she was waiting out front for me, and one from Angel. I have a moment. I call him back.

"How far away are you from Dr Vogel's?" he asks brusquely, and I know he's become aware of the disturbance there.

"Just a few streets," I say indifferently. Like I've been driving at the speed limit the whole way over here. "Why?"

"There've been reports of multiple gunshots fired at that address. I'm on my way there now, nearly there myself. Have you heard from Deb yet?"

"No." I pause for effect. "You don't think she's there now? What would she and Vogel be shooting at?"

"I don't know. One of the 911 callers heard screaming and furniture breaking. Maybe an intruder? I'm sure Deb's fine," Lieutenant Batista adds hastily when I am silent. "She'll probably have everything under control by the time we arrive. But – and I know you have little Harrison at home sick – if you don't mind, I asked Masuka to bring your kit? I don't know what to expect, and Vogel's a friend of the force, so nothing's too much... Wait, I'm getting another call..." I wait while he checks. "It's Deb. Thank God. Meet you there?"

"Absolutely." I hang up and pocket the phone. I put the car into gear and drive around the block. I can't help but scoff, "A friend of the force?"

I park Deb's car behind the ambulance and paste an anxious expression on my face, prepared to play the part of worried brother to the wounded detective and shocked family friend of the unexpected shooter. I jump out and slam the door. The one paramedic in sight, leaning into the open door of his vehicle to answer a radio call, hears and looks over as I increase my pace. He abandons his call and tries to intercept me.

"Sir, you can't go in there," he says firmly, stepping into my path. I stop and frown, pretending to be confused.

"Why is this ambulance here? Is someone hurt?" I ask, looking up at the house.

"Do you know the occupant of this residence?" the paramedic asks rather than answer me. I nod and say, "Yeah, Dr Vogel was a friend of my dad's. And I think my sister is here somewhere. Is she alright?"

No, of course she's not alright. She's slashed open, physically and emotionally, because her pathetic excuse for a brother keeps getting her hurt. But the medic doesn't know any of that, so he says, "I'm afraid I can't tell you much at this point, sir. The police are on their way to secure the scene."

I pretend that this makes me even more frightened about the situation but notice the front door open. Deb and another ambulance attendant step out of the house, faces grim and both in the middle of phone calls. My act was false – I knew she was safe – but my relief at seeing her is still real. I push past the paramedic to go to her; he is strong and stops me. I don't expect the interference and am momentarily alarmed by the apparent barrier between my sister and me. It takes a certain level of self control to keep myself from elbowing him in the face and bolting.

"I'm sorry, sir," he says forcefully, several times, and I have to raise my voice for him to hear me insist, "That's my sister. Listen, I'm meant to be here-"

"Hey! It's alright," Deb calls angrily, ending her phone conversation with Batista and approaching swiftly. It's like the last day didn't happen, like we have no earth-shaking issues between us. Like she wants the paramedic to let me go so I can be nearer to her, even though that's the last thing she really wants. "He's alright. He's my brother. He's in forensics."

There's a distinct feeling of dislike between the detective and the emergency response personnel. I don't understand how that developed so quickly. My paramedic releases me and I straighten my shirt. I withdraw my laminated I.D. card from my pocket.

"Miami Metro Homicide," I confirm. The medic nods stiffly, and I add, to practise being nicer, "I'm sorry. I should have mentioned that as soon as I got here."

"We're all prone to forgetting important details when we're worried for someone," he says, and I realise that I am forgiven. Just like that. If only things could be so easy with Deb. But they never will be, because, for one thing, _she_ 's not that easy, and for another, as she's said, I'm hard work myself. We're too complicated now for things to be easy. And I've done a lot more than just forget to mention my job when it comes to her, so it will take a lot more than 'I'm sorry' to fix our big fat mess.

The paramedics confer together by their vehicle and return to the radio call while Deb and I wander closer to the house.

"Are you alright? What happened?" I ask in a carefully worried voice.

"You can drop it. They're not even listening to us," she says flatly. We are far enough away to be out of earshot. "Can you believe they went to the wrong fucking address? If their stupidity cost that dead chick her life-"

"It wouldn't have made a difference," I interject quietly. "She was dead before I arrived. Probably before I even called." So it's a godsend it wasn't you. "Their timing ended up in our favour, anyway."

"That's a bit optimistic, isn't it? 'In our favour'? Dex, _nothing_ went in our favour except that we're not fucking _dead_. Vogel got away."

"But I'm going to catch up with her," I assure Deb in a low voice. In her frowning eyes, so empty from being emotionally dropped five minutes ago, I see the flicker of belief. She believes me. She knows I mean it. "She's going to pay. For everything." Because I promised you.

"Yeah, well, these assholes bought the story I sold but Angel's coming and that'll be way harder. I _hate_ lying to him."

"I know. But you don't need to worry about anything. He's bringing my kit so I'll be walking them through the timeline. They're not going to find anything that incriminates you, or me. There's nothing in the blood that denies your story. Except..." I wince, looking quickly at the nearly-forgotten cut on the back of my leg. It isn't deep or painful but the glass has put a small hole in the fabric of my pants and there is blood. That means there is blood, my blood, on at least one of the thousands of shards of glass in that hallway. "I'll just make sure I get a cut while I'm collecting the evidence, to explain why they might find traces of me there." I pause, thinking hard on the many variables at play here. I can think of no stone unturned. "That's... everything."

Deb's return look is sour. "Is this going to work, Dexter?" she asks testily.

"I think so." I allow a moment of pride. "Not bad considering there was no plan."

I speak too soon. Deb frowns over my shoulder.

"The fuck?" she mutters, and I turn to look. She's glaring at a dark-coloured car that is parked down a bit from where I parked hers; the same dark-coloured car, I realise with a sickening jolt to my stomach, that I saw parked in the next street.

Someone saw me leaving the scene of a crime with a handful of evidence. That same someone followed me as I drove around the corner and returned to said crime scene as an ignorant bystander.

Someone knows, and is ready to call 'bullshit' on our whole story.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I wonder whether the people who do own it ever read fanfiction from their universe? I think I would read fanfiction written about my original work.

I turn my head back casually as if I saw nothing of interest but inside I feel paralysed. Someone knows. I slipped up. Harry said I would and I did. Even worse, I've implicated Debra in the same move. Whoever watched me leave Vogel's has seen me re-arrive and has seen that she was already here. I feel like I did in that shopping centre when I unwittingly led Saxon straight to my family. Again I didn't even notice I was being followed. I am losing my touch.

Deb follows my cue and pretends not to have noticed the car.

"What?" she asks in dismay. "You look like you're thinking way too hard. What did I miss? There are worse people we could have to deal with right now than Elway."

Ugh – that slimy creep again. I didn't even notice his stupid face through the windscreen.

An earlier version of Dexter – the Dexter of a fortnight ago, perhaps – would probably have dodged the question and left her uninformed and tried to edge his way out of this bad situation without her. But I am today's Dexter, and though I insist I never change, _we_ are definitely changing, and my awareness of our connectedness is widening. Deb is my other half. She is every bit as intelligent, quick and capable as I am. Our father trained me to shut down on her and keep her in the dark but she dug her way out of that ignorance last year when she caught me killing Travis Marshall, and the more I try to hide things from her the more she digs and the worse everything gets. Though the compulsion to lie and say 'nothing's wrong' is still there, I am learning that Deb is stronger than Harry ever suspected. She can handle the truth, and more than that, she can handle _me_. To a point, at least. She can work with me. She can play a part and bounce off my improvisations. Once I would have told her nothing, but today's Debra Morgan can be more useful armed with the same information that I have.

"Not really," I sigh finally. "I think he saw me leaving."

Deb stares at me. "And now he's seen you walk back in?"

"Yeah. Looks like it."

She closes her eyes and takes a deep, calming breath. I cringe, knowing she's über-pissed with me, and wait for the onslaught. It'll be a contained explosion, of course, with the paramedics so close by, but I know I'm in for a grilling.

"You were followed and you didn't... notice?" she asks in a voice of deadly calm. "You slay high profile serial killers for a hobby and I used to be the bad-ass lieutenant of homicide and at the end of everything we're going to go down because you got spotted by fucking _Elway_? Don't shake your head at me," she adds threateningly. "That's how this ends and you know it. He's going to spill. Us in jail and him a hero? That's the lamest fucking ending I can think of." It's pretty bad, I will readily agree. Deb's eyes narrow spitefully. "I thought you were meant to be _good_ at this."

"I've been a little off my game lately," I admit lamely. "Apparently I'm less awesome than I thought."

"Maybe just a little," Deb agrees sarcastically. She jabs me in the chest with a finger. "You had better fix this. I am _not_ going to jail today. I am leaving for Orlando in two days for _your_ daughter's birthday party and as it is, I'm already going to need a new fucking dress to cover the bloody gaping holes in my back, which probably means a new set of shoes and jewellery because nothing will fucking match, and handcuffs, an orange jumpsuit and an ankle bracelet are _not_ part of my ideal fucking outfit!"

"I'll fix it," I promise quickly, mildly frightened by her escalating anger. "I'll get rid of him. And I'll buy the dress. And the shoes."

"And the jewellery. You're buying me a whole new goddamn wardrobe at this rate." She folds her arms and exhales heavily. "How do you manage to attract so much bad luck, Dexter?"

I shrug apologetically, but I am somehow not surprised that this bad luck has befallen me. I asked for this, didn't I? Didn't I say I would do anything to have Deb back? I clearly recall thinking it, many times. Well, the universe reached out and gave me back my sister – it is irrelevant that she was never in real danger, because as far as I knew, she was, for most of an hour – and now it is asking for the payment I promised. What will the payment be?

In my memory I hear my father's voice: _Debra's life or your freedom_. Obviously by the time he said that I'd already made my choice. It's the same choice I'd make any day, although many times I've skated close to the line between them. But I've never had to actually carry out the choice. Neither has ever actually been taken away. Is that going to change today?

"What's he doing?" I ask, keeping my voice down. Deb's eyes flicker in the direction of her former employer's vehicle. I am trying to work out how I will dispatch the private investigator without drawing any attention. He needs to die, obviously – this latest sense of menace, even a silent one, is the last straw. Rule Number One: don't get caught. It's irrelevant that he's not a killer and is not likely to kill in the future. He poses a threat to my existence and that of my family. But I can't very well walk up right now and stab him through the window. I also will have trouble leaving this crime scene now that the paramedics know I am here, so driving off with Elway isn't an option, either. What to do, what to do? It is almost humorous to me to realise that every time I have seen this man in the past week I have fantasised about killing him. It seems that now I'll be getting my wish.

"Nothing. Just sitting in his car. Probably thinks we haven't noticed him. Probably thinks we're ignorant fuckwits like you were, waltzing out the back door of a crime scene," Deb suggests snidely. We both look around as we hear the familiar siren of police cars in the distance. "Excellent. Here come our friends to clap us in irons."

"Have a little faith," I say testily. "I told you, nothing's going to happen. I'll fix this."

"How?" she demands. I raise an eyebrow at her, and her expression falls with realisation. "No. No, no, fucking no."

"Deb-" I begin wearily, but she leans close and hisses in my face, " _No_. Think of something else." We both smile tightly as the paramedics move into our proximity and speak with me about their observations on the two deceased inside. They have deduced that the female has been dead longer than the male but cannot proclaim either victim dead without a coroner. I listen as if their observations will be helpful to me, as if I haven't already seen both bodies and as if I wasn't present for Saxon's final moments.

Police cars arrive and fill the remaining parking spaces in the street. Batista is cool and calm getting out of the driver's side but opposite him Quinn leaps from the passenger seat and bolts across the street, leaving the car door swinging open.

"Deb," he calls, clearly relieved. I recognise the worry in his face as being similar to my own of not long ago, although I know mine was worse. Quinn only thought she was involved in a shoot-out and could guess that with her skills she would probably come out of it alright; I thought she was stolen, violated and dying, and I had quite convincing evidence in my hands. He slows as he gets closer and Deb looks back at him over her shoulder. His gaze sticks to her back and I read his fear. At quick glance, I know, the bloodstains in her shirt are not discernible from bullet wounds, but Deb's apparent state of health and my lack of fuss do not support this supposition. "Deb... what the fuck happened?"

"I don't think you'd believe me if I told you," she replies with a helpless half-shrug. I alone hear the honesty in her answer and look subtly away. The truth of our lives has become so incredibly complicated, twisted and extreme in all facets that by now, to anyone we might try to reach out to, it would seem like a fiction.

"Are you..." Quinn looks wary as he comes near, struggling to draw his attention from the glaring red. When he does, he looks up at her face and frowns. "Have you been _crying_?"

" _No_ ," Deb answers hotly, incensed. "Why?"

It's not a question, it's an invitation to open conflict, and no one else would play into it, but Quinn enjoys the game of provoking her. Innocently he touches a fingertip to her mascara- and tear-streaked cheekbone and says, "You've got some..."

Deb slaps his hand away. "Keep going. I dare you," she challenges, and is only made angrier when Quinn just laughs at her. Her predictable reaction calms him – evidently she is fine – and he spares me a smile as we greet each other. Angel, Masuka and others I do not bother to acknowledge make their way over.

"You alright, Deb?" our lieutenant asks, not too fussily so she can shrug it off if she wants to, always the caring big brother Deb should have had.

"I'm fine," she confirms, catching my eye meaningfully and, with a careful glance behind me, redirecting my attention to Elway. "It's nothing. You're not going to believe what just went down in there."

In accordance with my sister's silent warning, I look back over my shoulder. Jacob Elway, my current least-favourite person, is out of his car and walking in our direction. I dislike most everything about him – his self-assured smirk, his greasy walk, more of a glide really, his stupid hair brushed up and back like he's an aged rockstar who wasn't informed when the 80s ended. I almost like his jaw, which is highlighted noticeably purple with bruising, but only almost, and only because it was my elbow on Saturday that put the bruises there. But I hate that it isn't worse. Most of all I hate that he could ruin not only my whole day, but my whole life, with one verbalisation, and that hardly seems fair. He should be the least of my concerns; he is nothing, a little pawn in this big wide game of monsters and superheroes. Yet here he is, moving into position to threaten the red knight and queen. No one in chess is allowed to take two pieces in one move, but Elway isn't playing by the rules, and in his next move he can take both of my strongest (and only) remaining pieces, leaving my poor defenceless little king, Harrison, alone and vulnerable.

Batista notices Elway's approach. Once again, I find myself wishing Saxon had not just died. It would have been better for it to be Elway. If I were playing now against Saxon, at least I would be assured of privacy. Our game would be played in secret, behind careful words and poetic threats, and though it would be deadly, we would be equals and losing to him would be acceptable. Losing to Elway is _not_ acceptable. It would be embarrassing. He's not a killer. He's not even a _cop_. I cannot lose to anything less.

"Jacob Elway," Angel greets, politely but without welcome. He is wondering what a private investigator is doing at a fresh crime scene. I decide that the best defence is a good offence and that I ought to give Angel the explanation he is looking for.

"Here stalking my sister again, you fucking creep?" I sneer, surprising everyone present with my atypical aggression. This is not the Dexter they know; it puts them on alert. "Going to have another go at her? Didn't I tell you to leave her alone or you and I would have a big fucking problem?"

Deb catches on immediately. She folds her arms and levels the newcomer with her coldest gaze, silently backing up my position. He stops a few feet from us, clearly thrown. He expected submissive, frightened Morgans or ignorant, surprised-to-see-him-here Morgans. I can tell that his biting opening line, undoubtedly well-rehearsed while sitting in his car, is quickly forgotten.

"I think what my brother is asking you, Jake, is 'what the fuck are you doing here?'" Deb clarifies icily. "Since he and I sure as shit don't want to see you."

Everyone's attention moves to Elway to hear his response.

"What's going on?" Batista asks immediately, concerned. Quinn is frowning – he doesn't need anything more than what we've already said to get him on our side. Deb rolls her eyes and looks away; Elway opens his mouth to have his say, either to rebuke me or to simply drop the bombshell that he has up his sleeve, but I get in first.

"Twice in the last week this fucking loser has turned up at Deb's place without warning to harass her and give her a hard time-"

"-being a total fucking cock," Deb interjects helpfully.

"-mouthing off about her sleeping around and being an alcoholic-" I continue, though Deb is on a roll now too, and adds on, "and calling Dexter an idiot and making all these fucked-up comments about our lives, in front of Harrison, bringing up Rita and Frank and Rudy and having the fucking nerve to call these our 'great relationship choices' like he has any fucking _clue_ what we've been through-"

"He walked straight into Deb's house on Saturday uninvited and wouldn't leave," I tell my colleagues vehemently, glaring openly at Elway, who is now trying to defend himself, though no one is listening. The paramedics edge away awkwardly. "We must have asked five times. He just kept talking shit and threatening us and he was insulting us and cussing in front of my son-"

"-telling me to go get drunk so I can fuck other guys and forget their names; Dexter had to throw him out of my house, with Harrison watching-"

"This is after Deb had to quit working for him because he wouldn't lay off this kind of shit," I add. I address Elway directly when I say, "It's not bad enough to lay unwanted advances on an employee for months until she gets so uncomfortable that she leaves, hey? Have to follow her around after that, even follow her _car_ around Miami? Were you disappointed when it was me driving instead of Deb?"

"I-" he attempts, but Deb is louder.

"-all because I didn't want to screw _him_ and he's all fucking bitter-"

" _What_?" Quinn demands, eyebrows coming together angrily. I press the advantage.

"-and thinks turning up out of the blue trying to intimidate her is going to make her change her mind-"

"Like that would ever happen, and like we _give a fuck_ about his stupid fucking opinion," Deb concludes strongly. Our case made, we finally give Elway a chance to respond. My expression is firm but inside I am admittedly worried. He doesn't need to take the bait. He could ignore the opportunity to defend his honour and carry on with his own agenda. I hope he doesn't.

"That is _not_ what happened," he replies heatedly, and I release the breath I didn't know I was holding. Relief. He's taken the bait. He's going to waste time defending himself, which is hopeless – as Deb told Saxon, these are her people. They love the shit out of her. Anything Elway says against her, or me by extension, will only further tarnish his name, and then anything he tries to claim about us in regards to this crime scene will be shrugged off as him just being bastardly. "I did _not_ just turn up out of the blue – I was there with Deputy Marshall Clayton, who, by the way, I've just called-"

"You talked shit about Rita?" Angel interrupts, fixated on this most dishonourable act. His usually kind, wide eyes show his disbelief and disgust. "In front of her little boy? Dexter's wife is dead, man. Where's your respect?"

"Dude," Masuka voices, shaking his head, appalled. It takes a lot to appal Vince Masuka.

"I _didn't_ say _anything_ about the late Mrs Morgan," Elway defends tightly. "It was a far-fetched inference, and I already made apologies for any offence."

"I didn't hear those apologies," Deb speaks up frostily. "I definitely don't recall getting one for you barging into my house and calling me, what was it? Dexter's slut sister?"

She and I don't need to say or do anything else. We've inflamed the discussion enough that now it burns of its own accord. Our friends are predictable, and yes, I've manipulated them to my purpose, which I'm sure Deb will grill me for later, but she said to find an alternative to killing Elway and this was my best option.

"Where the fuck do you get off, talking to her like that?" demands Quinn. He moves to stand closer to Deb's side, supportive. "Who do you think you are?"

"You didn't really say that, did you, Jacob?" Angel asks, both concerned and mortified. He looks to me for confirmation, as if I am someone to look to for honesty. I nod once grimly.

"This is all completely out of context," Elway mutters. There's enough truth to our accusations that it doesn't occur to him to simply deny them. Angel raises his eyebrows.

"Oh? I didn't know there _was_ a context where this kind of behaviour was acceptable," he says sharply. "You're meant to be a professional. Appearing at an ex-employee's house to verbally abuse her-"

"That is _not_ what happened," Elway repeats, frustration and anger evident. He gestures at me, the motion almost violent. "I got a fucking tip. Hannah McKay-"

"Oh, here we go," Deb sneers.

"Hannah McKay is still in Miami," Elway insists angrily. "Dexter used to fuck her. Deb does whatever Dexter needs. McKay comes back on the scene and fuckwit Dexter is stupid enough to think there's a future there and uses his dumb slut sister to cover for him. They're hiding McKay."

My stony glare doesn't change but inside I'm irritably impressed. Of all the people who might unravel the truth, fucking Elway gets there first? Aside from the insulting adjectives he uses to describe my sister he is totally spot on. I _am_ stupid. I _am_ imagining a future with Hannah that doesn't exist. My sister _does_ do anything for me that I ask, even when it's clearly not in her interests or it's against her wishes. I _do_ use her.

"Watch your fucking mouth," Quinn snarls, taking an aggressive step towards Elway. "You don't get to call her-"

"A slut?" Elway finishes boldly, smirking without humour. Quinn actually freezes mid-step, surprised that the other man would go there. "Newsflash for you, boy: she _is_ a fucking slut. She was fucking all her marks when she worked for me. Weren't you, Morgan? I sent you off to follow Andrew Briggs and take some pictures of his dealings, and instead you were getting close-ups of his cock."

Deb doesn't have time to be embarrassed. Quinn launches himself at Elway, growling, "Shut your motherfucking mouth!" Masuka clears well out of the way but Angel and I put ourselves between the two men. Deb catches Quinn's arm, wincing when her shoulder twinges with the strain of holding him back. He sees her expression and immediately falls back.

"Forget it, he's not fucking worth it," she mutters, clutching her arm across her chest to keep the shoulder still. I lean through the group to address the nervous-looking paramedics.

"Can we get someone to take a look at my sister?" I ask. "She took a hit inside."

"I did not, I'm fucking fine," Deb insists, waving them away, to which Quinn says, "You don't _look_ fine."

"What hit her, Dexter?" Elway asks, triumph lighting his eyes suddenly. "You must have seen it happen. Since you were _here_ for whatever just went down in there."

"What the hell are you talking about, Elway?" Angel asks irritably. I maintain my look of dislike and annoyance and wait out this very critical phase of project dismantle-Elway's-credibility. "Dexter, how long have you been here?"

"Uh, a few minutes," I offer, looking at the paramedic who is trying to get close enough to Debra to look at her wounds. He gives up on her and turns to Angel to say, "He arrived about three minutes before you did, Lieutenant. He's been out here with us the whole time."

Elway is shaking his head. "No. I just watched him walk out the back and drive around here. What just happened in there? Something fucked-up, am I right? Hannah McKay's in there, isn't she?"

"That's none of your concern, _Mr_ Elway," Angel answers coolly, using the title to remind the investigator that he is no cop and has no right to any further information. "And I think it's best you leave now."

"I think you need to hear what I saw, Lieutenant."

"I think you need to get back into your car and get out of here before I can lose my shit with you. I don't want to hear any more. I don't want to know what stupid imaginary scenario you've cooked up about my best detective and my blood analyst. You're an embarrassment, man."

"Dexter was _just here_! He was _inside that house_! What are you two up to? Is this where you're hiding McKay?"

"I just arrived!" I rebuke, appealing to the medics. "You saw me."

"He drove up, saw the ambulance and tried to run in, thinking something had happened to his sister," my paramedic confirms, "and there's no one alive inside."

"Two down – you're not going to _believe_ who, and no, it's not fucking Hannah McKay – and the house is clear," Deb agrees.

And this is good enough for Angel. He turns back to Elway expectantly.

"Take your lies someplace else," he says dismissively. "We've got shit to do."

"Dexter and Debra Morgan are the fucking liars," Elway snarls. He points between Deb and I. "These two are fucking _not normal_. They are _everywhere_ together. Everything one's involved in, the other's there, too. Even today-"

"They're fucking _siblings_ and they _work together_ ," Quinn yells, annoyed. "It follows logically that you'll see both at the same fucking time."

"I suppose you're another one she's fucking?" Elway sneers, and it's to everyone's surprise that Masuka is the one to reply.

"Debra Morgan is the finest fucking detective I know," he interjects importantly, silencing everyone. "She's a professional woman of outstanding class and was not put on this planet for your sexual gratification. How dare you assume otherwise? Her sexual independence is none of your fucking business and if it offends you then I can suggest a place you can shove your opinions. You're going to have a difficult time finding anyone here who wants to hear them. And if it only offends you because it doesn't include you, then we've probably arrived at the _reason_ you never stood a chance – because you're a pathetic, self-entitled, spoilt little shit."

No one knows quite what to say to that unexpected outburst, except Deb, who comments, "Wow. Thanks, Vince."

"Jacob Elway," Batista says loudly in the astonished silence that follows. "Remove yourself immediately from these premises or I'll have you escorted."

"Don't worry, I'm leaving," Elway says frigidly, backing away. I think Masuka's input is what has unsettled him the most. He points between Deb and me again as he moves towards his car. "There is something fucking _off_ about you two. This isn't over with."

I wish it would be. He gets in his car and drives off. The rest of us seethe quietly for a minute and recover ourselves from our anger.

"Fucker," Quinn spits eventually. He takes a few calming breaths and looks over at me. "Did you really throw him out of the house?"

"Elbowed him in the face," I agree, impressing him. "I'm not as useless as I look."

"Only marginally less," Deb says to remind me that this was an uncomfortably close call. She nods at Vogel's house. "Come on, I'll walk you through what happened. Dex and Masuka are here, let's make this quick so we can go and track fucking Vogel down."

"Vogel?" Batista asks in confusion, but his query is almost lost under the voice of someone else.

"Is that the best idea?"

We all look over at Deputy Marshall Clayton as he walks over from his car. Deb gives me a long-suffering look that I read loud and clear – when will we ever catch a break?

"Deputy Marshall?" Angel questions. "What can we do for the Federal Marshall Service today?"

"I just had the strangest phone call, so I came straight over," Clayton says, sparing a quick look of acknowledgement for both Deb and I. "I don't want to hold you up; I'll be frank. As you know I'm still investigating the possibility that Hannah McKay is occupying space somewhere in Miami, and I've been working off the idea that she might be seeking out old acquaintances. In particular I'm keeping my attention on her old juvie friend Ms Shram and her ex-boyfriend... Dexter Morgan," he gestures casually to me, inoffensively, "in case McKay attempts to make contact or worse." He scratches his head and glances doubtfully at the ambulance. "Now that I'm here I can see that there might be good reason for what Jacob Elway mentioned on the phone-"

"Which was?" Deb prompts coolly. "The name Jacob Elway is a little less shiny than usual today."

"Look, I get that he's a jerk and I in no way agree with the way he talked to either of you last time we met," Clayton says quickly, and I like him slightly more. He slips down my mental kill list another rung. Maybe one day, but for now, he's alright. "I saw his car peel out of the street as I pulled in so I can guess you've already had the pleasure of his company today. If I had other leads I would prefer to use those over having to listen to the likes of him. But he called me and said he'd seen Dexter Morgan racing through the streets like his life depended on it, which in itself set off alarm bells, but then that he'd seen you jump someone's fence and return fifteen minutes later only to drive around the front. He seemed to think you were responding to summons from McKay." He shrugs helplessly. "I've got to say, it sounded freaking weird, and now I see the ambulance and the state of your sister I'm feeling embarrassed to admit I was thinking your motives were anything less than noble, but you know I have to follow all leads."

"Of course you do," Deb agrees, also apparently seeing the ray of sunshine that is Clayton's willingness to believe we are innocent. She looks over at me with annoyance. "You were driving my car. There'd better not be any scratches. Am I going to get a speeding fine?"

Probably several infringement notices, actually, I think, but I say, "Maybe. I was almost here and called Angel and he said there'd been a shooting here and you weren't answering your phone. I freaked a little. Might have stepped on the gas a bit more than the speed signs said I could. Sorry."

"You're paying it if I do get one," Deb threatens. I nod without hesitation, and turn back to Clayton.

"I did get a bit fast on the last leg of the drive over, but I came straight here," I explain. "I knew Deb was coming here to pick up her phone from Vogel and after talking to Angel..."

"You didn't make a pit stop in the next street and hop the fence to visit someone inside?"

"If he had I would have fucking shot him," Deb says abruptly. "He would have walked into a fucking fire fight."

"And Hannah McKay isn't staying inside this house?" Clayton checks.

"With Dr Vogel?" Angel laughs. "The woman identifies and treats psychopaths for a living, she doesn't keep them as pets."

Uh...

"You might be surprised, Angel," Deb warns, but to Clayton she says, "No, I checked out every room. No Hannah McKay. Unidentified female victim; male assailant, down, is known to police."

He's buying it, I can see it in his face. I hope he just caves and decides to leave us be, so we can wrap up this crime scene and get out there to find Vogel. I can honestly admit to myself that I have _no_ clue where she might have gone from here. I have received no communication from her, or from Hannah or Jamie, my vulnerabilities. Somehow I don't think Evelyn Vogel is in a place right now to be hatching revenge plots. I think she's hurt and is hiding away somewhere to lick her wounds while she recoups and considers the best way to hurt me back.

"Look, Elway is a piece of shit," Quinn points out. "He made up that jumping-the-fence crap to try to make Dex and Deb look bad, but it makes no fucking sense and doesn't fit the timeline at all. Dexter called Angel and said he was leaving his place about half an hour ago. It's a half-hour drive out here." Twenty-three minutes, normally. Twelve minutes, if you take out the stop signs and speed limits. "Speed up that last five minutes and you have him arriving at the front door exactly when the paramedics say he did."

"Exactly," Deb says, starting for the house. "Now come _on_ , before the fucking bodies decompose. Dexter, get your kit and get in there."

Masuka hands my heavy box over.

"All the same," Clayton says reluctantly to Angel, stopping Deb in her tracks, "and I don't mean any disrespect, but in the crazy off-chance that there's any grain of truth to Elway's story, I have to insist for the legitimacy of my investigation, and yours, that your Morgans walk us through the scene separately."

We all stare at him, but I know there's nothing unreasonable about his request. It's what any straight-thinking cop would insist upon if he didn't know the people involved. Miami Metro's weakness is that they know Deb and I and it doesn't occur to them that Elway might be totally correct. If we have just committed a crime together and then are given the opportunity to explain our version of the events together, we can bluff our way through by bouncing off the other's improvisation and filling in each other's gaps. Questioned separately, slip-ups become quickly obvious.

But Clayton doesn't realise how fucking efficient we Morgans are, because we've already got our story straight.

"That's not necessary," Angel begins, annoyed, but I placate him by raising my hands in casual surrender.

"No, Angel, it's fine," I say. I slide the strap of my kit off my shoulder and open the box on the sidewalk. I find a pair of plastic gloves and pull them on, noting the ever-increasing redness of Deb's teeth marks. "It's a good idea. Masuka and I will take Quinn through, get pictures and tell him what the evidence shows. You and Clayton can stay out here with Deb and get her report while she gets her back looked at." I stand and heft the weight of the kit. Deb starts to argue that she is fine but I am already walking away with Masuka, pointing back at her, saying, "It's not fine. It hasn't stopped bleeding since I got here. I think it needs stitches."

It was a close shave but from there everything flows smoothly. I make no indication to either Quinn or Masuka that what we encounter on the second floor is anything other than new to me.

"Oliver Saxon!" Quinn comments in disbelief when we find the cooling corpse in the hallway. "I've been looking for this fucker. What the fuck was he doing here?"

Masuka makes the obligatory comment about the dangers of running with scissors. We take photos and dust for prints on the scissors and residual gunpowder on Saxon's hands. Masuka goes to take hair and fibre samples from the dead hooker, more his bag than mine, while I walk around the hall counting bullet holes and noting the angle in which each has struck the plaster.

"So. What the fuck happened here?" Quinn asks, standing over Saxon with a look of disappointment on his face. Like me, he would have liked to get this guy himself. Unlike me, he just wanted to see him behind bars. I exhale thoughtfully, and return to the stairs to begin acting out the series of events I have agreed upon with my sister.

"There were two shooters, and neither was Saxon," I note. "No evidence of gunpowder on his hands. There was a third person, over there. Deb must have come up the stairs and seen them involved in some kind of altercation. See the stab wound, there in his leg? Someone else had these scissors first and attacked him." I show Quinn other minor evidence of a scuffle, all the wounds I inflicted on Saxon during our fight. "Deb calls for them to stop but they don't listen and the third person has a gun, so Deb fires a warning shot. That'll be it there," I add, pointing out the lowest bullet hole. I lower myself into a practised shooting stance and aim my imaginary gun at the hole – it lines up perfectly. Deb had time to consider this shot while she watched Saxon lay into me with his fists. "The one with the gun turns the gun on Deb and starts firing back." I hurry to where Vogel was standing and show the trajectory of the first four shots. "All terrible, but one comes close and hits the cabinet. See, only the middle panels are smashed while the other levels are unharmed? And this whole support of timber here," I take him over and show, "is gone, blasted out by the bullet. Deb would be taking cover here." I press myself into the wall as she did to me earlier. "That explains the fucking mess of her back. She returns fire, two shots." I show how she did this with one hand. "Much cleaner. One hits Saxon, who is coming at her with the scissors, in the leg. He goes down." I go to him and show the minor bleed from his thigh. "Masuka's right, he was holding the scissors with the blades up and when his leg gave out he went down on the point. He was running and went down harder for it – his own speed and weight drove him down onto the blade, straight into his throat. He would have been dead within a minute, probably less."

"I want to say it's fucking weird that you find this so fascinating, but you know what, I think it's more weird that _I_ 'm so fascinated watching you talk about it," Quinn comments dryly. "You sound like you're narrating a goddamn thriller." When I just look at him uncomprehendingly, he shakes his head and says, "Go on. What happened next?"

"Deb must have come out. The shooter went to Saxon while he died-"

"How do you know?" Clayton asks, coming up the stairs. I refuse to be put off by his arrival. I'm a freaking professional and I'm freaking good at this. I continue, unfazed.

"Because the next three shots come from closer to the body," I explain, standing where Vogel was when she last shot at us. "Not that this person's aim is a whole lot to go by, but there were two shots from right here, and one, the first one I guess," actually, the second one, when we ducked, "is directed more downward, so I assume Deb was crouched, maybe appealing to the shooter or trying to help. The shooter took two shots at her and she shot back once." I shift to pretend to be Deb again and take a deliberate step backwards and bring my arm up level to pretend to fire back at Vogel. It is convenient that this is where I was standing when I shot at her, because it fits perfectly with this version of events, and also that Deb is my height. "The shot's not great. The bullet hole has got an upward look to it, like it was fired before the gun was level. Deb's shoulder's fucked; she must have used the wrong hand."

"Yeah, it looks bad," Quinn agrees, slightly worriedly. "Anything else?"

I shrug, looking around. "Saxon bled out. No movement. The shooter must have gotten away, though not down the stairs... They would have needed to get past Deb..." We walk together and find the door that is still open from Vogel and Deb bursting through it. We return to the hallway and go to Masuka. "Deb goes through the house to check it's all clear. She finds the woman, checks for signs of life."

"Finds none," Masuka fills in. "This broad's been dead at least an hour."

"Doesn't call it in?" Clayton continues, eyebrow raised. His gaze moves to the smear of blood in the corner. I try to feel nothing about it and not think about what almost happened there.

"Doesn't have a phone," I correct. "Came here to get it. Freaks out. Pulls glass out of herself." I point out the pieces we scattered across the floor to flesh out our story, while Quinn stares in distress at this evidence of Deb's ordeal today. He has no idea. It's been so much worse than he knows. Because of me. "Leans against the wall until she has a grip – maybe a minute?"

"I don't like to judge, but your sister doesn't seem the sort to 'freak out' at a crime scene," Clayton comments. I shrug; this was the part of the story Deb least liked, too, but it explains the wall without mentioning that her fuckwit brother threw her into it and almost made out with her.

"She's not perfect," I say unhelpfully. Inside I am frowning at myself. Of course she is.

"And... _your_ injuries?" Clayton asks, eyeing me. I consider that the dull aches in my body are probably starting to show up, particularly the soreness on my neck where I was almost choked with a bolt. I assume there is a red line. The whacks to the head I took are bumps hidden under my hair and the bite mark on my hand is disguised by the glove. "Should I be suspicious?"

"Again, she's not perfect," I repeat, which confuses Clayton. He starts to ask for an explanation but Quinn is the one to clarify, "He means no. He just regularly has his ass handed to him by his sister."

Deputy Marshall Clayton seems surprised but his curiosity is nourished. I shrug in agreement. "She's a handful."

*  
"She was so pissed last night that she didn't catch Saxon downtown," Quinn recalls, and I am startled to realise that it was only _last night_ that Deb went after Saxon. It seems an age since I waited up for her, playing solitaire, since she came home without the cheeseburger I really didn't care for, since she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder, since I walked her to her room and she told me exactly what kind of terrible human being I have become, and since she destroyed me by telling me that I am killing her with my despicable selfishness. I glance again at the blood on the wall and feel deeply depressed. How much closer have I pushed Deb today to the end of her? How much more can she take from me? I think of my escalating dreams. The first two, where I found her already dead, were awful but were nothing compared with those that followed, because in those later dreams Deb only died after letting her guard down with me and opening her heart to me. And the more fully I loved her, the more horrific her death became. Last night's sickening nightmare still clings to my recent memory. I try not to look over at Clayton, whose presence just makes me realise that, today, Deb and I have now encountered all five of the people involved in Debra's dream-death last night. The only elements remaining are for Deb and I to have simultaneously satisfying and inappropriate sex and for my dead brother to walk in.

"She says she wasn't but she has definitely been crying," Quinn confides, leaning aside to check Deb isn't coming down the hallway. "I think finding this chick must have really upset her. She was so determined that we weren't going to leave that strip until we knew all the girls had been accounted for. This must have really knocked her." He shakes his head sadly, then looks at me sharply. "Don't tell her I said any of that."

"I won't if you promise not to tell her that I agree, she was _definitely_ crying, but that I think it was probably more to do with the slashes in her back." I crouch amongst the pieces of glass and carefully pick up the most troublesome one, the long piece I pulled from her shoulder. I recall that I dropped it straightaway, so I didn't really get a look at it. It's as long as my forefinger, and more than half of it was embedded in my sister. If it had gone in at a different angle it would have been long enough to pierce her lung. She was incredibly lucky. There is no way I am letting her go home today without stitches, even if I have to drug her or hold her down myself.

"Deal," Quinn accepts heartily, coming over to shake my hand. He looks at the Deputy Marshall. "Satisfied, sir?"

Clayton nods, poker-faced. "You sound like you know your job well, Mr Morgan. I just want to ask one thing. This second shooter: how tall would you say that person was?"

I go to the hall and use string to show him the trajectory of one of Vogel's bullets. I give him Vogel's approximate height in feet and inches.

"Any idea who it might have been?" he asks. I shrug.

"Yes, an idea," I admit, "but other than a height and my sister's word I don't have any other evidence yet to support that idea. We'll probably be able to confirm it once we run our testing at the lab for DNA."

"Who do you think it was?" Quinn asks, and Masuka pokes his head into the hallway to listen. I look between the other men.

"Debra said – and I believe her," I add, "that it was Evelyn Vogel. She told me outside that Dr Vogel shot at her."

Clayton expected this answer; I see that he is appeased, that Deb's story and my observations do not conflict at all. Quinn and Masuka are dumbfounded that the slightly weird old lady who has been consulting for us is capable of this. It doesn't make sense, they say. Why was Oliver Saxon in her house? Why would she shoot at Deb instead of at the murderer? Why would she run away?

We get what we need from the scene. I 'accidentally' cut my finger on a sharp piece of glass while bagging evidence. I apologise profusely to a very wearisome Vince Masuka. Angel brings Deb through the scene, having never been remotely suspicious of her, and she and I talk him through the finer details. Clayton takes a heated phone call and we guess, as he wanders out of the house berating the caller, that it is Elway. He soon returns to excuse himself, and apologises to Deb and I for any disrespect. I wish I could hate him more. I may yet have to kill him, and that would be easier if he were a bastard.

Deb _does_ need stitches, and only goes to hospital when Quinn offers to drive her there so she doesn't have to ride in the ambulance. I am not delighted about being apart from her but I can't think of anyone who will take better care of her. Mostly I am just relieved that doctors will be seeing to her.

I agree to return to work for a few hours to get started on the blood work so we can make some headway on the case. Angel assures me that whatever needs to be done to find Vogel will be done. The psychiatrist is clearly a danger to herself and others. He suggests that she may have finally cracked, a theory which I genuinely agree to.

I ring Jamie. Harrison is asleep again but she says that he woke for a little while to drink from his water bottle. Apparently he expressed further regret about missing Alex's show and tell, declined food and went back to sleep. Jamie asks what happened earlier. She confirms that it was my sister on the home phone line and asks where I was off to in such a hurry. I summarise the events of the morning.

"I bet Joey's happy, getting to take care of Deb," she says bitterly before she can stop herself. "Ugh, yuck, I'm sorry, Dexter. That was a horrible thing for me to say. Of course I hope Deb's alright. And you. I know you must have been insanely worried, seeing her bleeding and the ambulance and all that."

"I know, it's okay," I assure her quickly. "You don't need to apologise for being pissed with Quinn."

"But I shouldn't be taking it out on your sister," Jamie states with class and certainty. "It's not her fault Joey's frigging obsessed with her. She hasn't done anything to encourage him. _She_ dumped _his_ ass. Obviously a move I should have learned from. And if she decides she wants him back... good luck to her. She can have him."

After I hang up with Jamie I peek through my window to view what the rest of the department is doing. Angel is working with Miller at a whiteboard, recording the timeline of events for this morning's double homicide. I realise that the first event was the theft of Deb's phone, followed by the text sent to mine. I quickly go through my phone's files to view the awful picture Saxon sent me. Though the first time I saw it I took a few long seconds to make out the image, my mind now immediately jumps to the connection it made earlier without any preamble. I see a serial killer in the foreground and my raped and murdered sister on the bed. It's horrific. I can't let Angel see this – this is 'call the cops' territory and all I said on the phone to him was 'Deb sent me a strange photograph that has me worried'. I hit 'edit' and change the contrast and add some other effects to distort the image. The letters on the shirt disappear. I save it. I delete the original.

It's some time before Angel comes to see me. I talk him through the tests I have started but add that I have nothing yet to report.

"Dex, when you called the second time, you said Deb had sent you a text, a photo," he says, sitting down on the other stool in the lab. "Something that made you worried? But she didn't have her phone with her at that point; Dr Vogel, or Oliver Saxon, must have sent it."

"Yeah, I've been thinking that," I agree, getting my phone for him and opening the file. I hand it over, hoping he doesn't notice the picture is not under 'messages'. "I don't know, I thought I recognised the room from when Deb was staying there, getting treatment. But the rest was so garbled. I thought that must have been Debra, there," I say, wheeling my stool closer to point out the figure of the unnamed prostitute. She's even more difficult to make out now, but I like her better like this, colours all wrong and lines warped and blurred. She is no longer my sister, dead because of me. She's just a dead stranger, which is the truth of it. "And now I realise that this guy must be Saxon, and the girl was the victim we found. It's so weird, having a photo on my phone of two dead people who were alive three hours ago."

"It's weird," Angel agrees wholly. He frowns thoughtfully. "Any idea why Vogel or Saxon would send this to you? Proof of what they did? I mean..." He squints at the picture. "The girl he picked looks _kind of_ like Deb, doesn't she?"

"Maybe a little," I offer, taking the phone back and plugging it into the computer. "More in life than in the photo." I pretend to consider. "You think he was trying to scare me into going there? Make it look like he had my sister?" He did a fucking good job, let me tell you.

"But how would Saxon know to choose a prostitute that looks like Deb and to send the picture to you?" Angel muses. "He met Deb only once. He met you, what, twice? Three times? How could he know your connection, and why would it matter to him?"

"You're right, it makes no sense." I open the file on the computer and click 'print'. "Maybe it wasn't Saxon who sent it. Maybe..."

I hesitate, not part of my act. I don't want to paint Vogel in a sympathetic light, not ever, but I also don't really want her arrested. I want her for myself. She killed my father; she turned me into the monster that, daily, wreaks havoc on Deb. I promised Deb I would kill the doctor, but if I let her go to prison this will not be an option. Not to mention all the madwoman knows – she can't be allowed anywhere near a jury.

"You think _Vogel_ sent it? Why?" Angel asks curiously. I shrug.

"I still can't explain why Saxon was there, why he chose the girl or why he took the photo, but maybe Vogel wasn't all that okay with what was going down," I suggest. "Maybe she got hold of the phone and sent the picture to me as a cry for help?"

"I hadn't thought of that," Angel admits, "but that also doesn't explain why she shot at your sister when she turned up and tried to intervene."

"PTSD?" I offer, thinking of the same condition Vogel was treating Deb for. "I guess we just need to find her and ask her for ourselves."

Vince Masuka throws open my door.

"So, update," he announces. "The medical examiner says Coldie had non-violent, probably consensual sex within six hours of her demise – which I could have told you, because who picks up a hooker to kill and doesn't get dirty with her first?" Uh, my brother? "They also agree with Dextrous and I that she bled out while unconscious, and they've found burst capillaries consistent with asphyxiation. Meet America's most underappreciated date-rape drug." He produces a pillow from behind his back. Angel and I say nothing, mortified as always by Masuka's choice of words. He doesn't notice our expressions. "Localised traces of saliva and mucus in this one spot from heavy exhalations, probably as she screamed until she ran out of air and just passed out. The M.E. is likely to find fibres from this pillow all down her throat." He examines the area with interest, unaffected by the awful mental picture he is creating for us.

"And... do we know yet who she is?" Angel checks. I shake my head.

"We ran her prints but she's never been arrested before."

"Which is weird, you know, because she's a hooker," Vince goes on. "They're _all_ on the database; they've _all_ been arrested. So to find the only one in Miami that has never been caught and printed is super weird. Not to mention annoying. What use are her fingers to us if she hasn't been printed before? Might as well not have them. Saxon could have chopped them off and we'd probably have more information then."

"Thank you very much, Vince," Angel says, standing. "You never cease to amaze me with your talent for recreating and even expanding upon horrifying events."

"Happy to help."

They both leave. I sigh and get back to work.

It's midafternoon when Quinn walks in with Deb. She's still wearing the blood-soaked flannelette shirt from earlier but goes to her locker where she finds something to change into. When she returns to her desk in a fresh shirt I am taken aback by how tired she looks. I consider that after our dreadful exchange very late last night, she probably didn't get a whole lot more sleep than I did. The shooting today, her injuries, the stress of redirecting both Elway and Clayton and, worst of all, the emotional knockback of my very inappropriate affection and subsequent withdrawal, have taken a huge toll on her. She is a shadow of the beautiful thing that smiles at me from my phone whenever she calls. But she still gets on with her work. Quinn pokes his head in the door of my lab.

"If by chance there happens to be an angry lynch mob outside when you leave," he says dryly, "it's just the whole medical staff of Miami General Hospital wanting to burn your sister as a witch."

"That bad?" I ask with some genuine sympathy, not even pretending to misunderstand. He rolls his eyes.

"I would say 'you have no idea' but I think you probably do. She was such a _bitch_ to _everyone_ there. Even the work experience kid!" He shakes his head. "There were two big cuts. Five stitches in one," he reaches across his shoulder to show its relative position on himself, "and two in the other, down here." He does the same for the lower cut. He gives me a slip of paper, a prescription for medication. "Painkillers, anti-inflammatory meds and antibiotics to prevent infection. Would _not_ go into the pharmacy on our way back. She thinks she's so fucking tough, I don't trust her to actually go out and get these herself, so..."

"I'll make sure she gets them," I assure him. I used to very much dislike Joey Quinn, and even now I am iffy about him, but his devotion to my Deb keeps him off my kill radar and in my reluctant good books. He is the only person I can think of capable of loving her as much as I do. I both like this and don't. On one hand I am glad there is someone she can go to when I fail her; on the other, I still hope she can do better.

Then again, as long as she gets better than _me_ , isn't that better enough?


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I wish.
> 
> Author's notes: Welcome to another episode! I write to music. Some scenes or elements of this fanfiction are strongly influenced by one song or playlist. To bellart, and anybody else who cares about this kind of thing, the song I listen to in order to feel some sympathy and near-affection for Hannah is Anywhere by Evanescence. 'We're leaving here tonight/ There's no need to tell anyone/ They'd only hold us down/ So by the morning's light/ We'll be halfway to anywhere/ Where love is more than just your name'. Hannah was so poorly motivated in the show. I really love this song and wish I could give it to someone other than goddamn Hannah McKay, but making this song her soul has made me able to almost like her, and has certainly allowed me to let her live this long.

I watch through my window as Deb hands in her gun to Angel (typical protocol following a weapon discharge and especially since Saxon actually took a hit) and sits down with him in his office, formerly hers, to write her formal statement. It takes ages. I start to worry that she has slipped up, said something that doesn't fit, but then they come out joking and laughing and I am calmed. Things will be okay. Batista, Miller, Quinn and Deb work on the timeline and fence phone calls for the afternoon. I keep myself busy processing evidence until Angel realises I am still here and sends me home.

"I can't," I say. "Deb drove." But I still have her keys.

"Your son is sick," Angel reminds me. "I'll drop you home."

He goes back to the other detectives and I follow. He informs them of where he is going and I try to hand Deb back her car keys. She reaches for them but Quinn pushes her hand aside.

"I don't think so," he says. "I was with you at the hospital. Your doc said no driving for the rest of the day. You may not have heard him over your own whingeing and bitching."

Deb's mouth drops open, indignant, and she is silent, no retaliation ready for this unexpected comeuppance. Angel turns to me and puts his own keys back in his pocket.

"Alright, it looks like you've scored a car for the afternoon," he says cheerfully while Deb glares at him. "Get out of here. Again. Go spend some time with your boy."

I don't want to. Of course, I love time spent with Harrison, but right now I know he is with the person most qualified to take care of him and in light of the day's events, more than anything, I just want to be near to my sister. I want to sit alone with her for the rest of the day and just _talk_ and say all the things I need to get out. Or maybe just say nothing at all, since I seem to only make things worse when I open my mouth. It doesn't matter. I just want to be _with_ her. I can't say this, so I just meet her gaze quickly, hoping to communicate it to her.

Her eyes are deep and the same shape and colour as ever but in that brief moment I do not recognise them. Deb, my Deb, can be characterised as a complicated, turbulent bundle of very powerful emotions. The eyes looking at me are blank. Empty. Very un-Debra. I don't like it at all. I realise this is the first time we've looked at each other since I left her with the paramedics outside Vogel's. She didn't look like this then. Although... She _did_ look like this after I pulled away from her in the room. And between the near-mistake and the paramedics, I suppose, she and I were both running on autopilot, all business, surviving, bouncing off the other's cues to ensure we walked off that property without handcuffs. Now that the immediate danger of being caught out by Elway or Clayton has passed... What? I don't know.

"Deb?" I ask, trying not to sound wary or scared. She blinks. The same look.

"You go. Someone will drop me off. Pick me up tomorrow for work?" She _sounds_ normal, and she even spares a quick smile for the benefit of the others, but the eyes still worry me. "Let me know how Harrison gets on."

"He'll be up and running around trying to look healthy once he remembers he's leaving for Orlando with you on Wednesday," I agree. I turn the keys over in my hand. I _really_ don't want to leave but I have no excuses. "Okay. I'll call you tonight."

"Goodbye," Deb says as I turn around. I almost miss a step. _Good_ bye? That sounds a lot more final than just _bye_ or _later_. Or am I just reading too much into it after the emotional rollercoaster that the day has been? I decide to give her the benefit of the doubt and smile at her over my shoulder as I make myself leave. She'll be fine. After the shooting and with her injuries no one will let her out of their sight. And I won't call tonight, I'll _see_ her, because no matter how pissed she is with me, I'm determined that I'll take care of her.

Quinn catches my eye. I nod and, when Deb looks back at the whiteboard, silently reply, "On it!"

Good as my word, I drive Deb's BMW to the nearest pharmacy and obtain the drugs the hospital recommended for her. The metal bolt from the glove box finds its way into the trash can outside their door. These chemists are undeniably quicker and more efficient than the ones from this morning, and I am on my way within two minutes of walking in. I make a mental note to use this one in the future rather than waste my time on the other.

I go home and find Jamie pensively folding towels. She looks small and sad, and I feel for her. I am feeling for people more and more, I find, as my sister brings my attention, more and more, to focus on my overwhelmingly selfish behaviour. Jamie tells me Harrison has slept the day away but that colour has returned to his cheeks and he is getting a very deep, full rest.

"Did anyone come by?" I ask casually, thinking about Dr Vogel. I really did not expect that she would do anything and have no idea where she went, but in reflection I am annoyed with myself. I should _always_ be aware of where pissed-off dangerous foes are – pissed-off dangerous foes have taken apart my world in the moments when I least expected them to make a move.

"Nope. All's quiet here." Jamie smiles quickly and positions the last towel atop the pile she has made. "Since you're back, I'm going to head back to Quinn's and keep packing all my stuff." She gathers the pile and heads to the linen cupboard to put it all away.

"Hey, Jamie," I say suddenly, following her. "Why don't you wait? When Harrison wakes up I'll come with you and I'll help. It'll get done way quicker if you have another pair of hands," I add when she tries to decline. She starts to relent, and I push, relishing the idea of doing something nice for someone who deserves it, "It's been a hectic day and I'm still on edge. I really don't want to sit around here all afternoon alone watching daytime soaps. I don't mind; I want to."

"Well... if you're really sure, Dexter? Because you don't have to," she adds hurriedly, while I wave away her concerns dismissively and grab out my phone.

"It's done. I'm telling Quinn now," I say, and add in the message that I have the drugs and will leave them in his kitchen, so he will need to think of an excuse to stop in there while he's dropping Deb home. It's like a game – a much smaller, less dangerous game than the one I played this morning with Saxon with much lower stakes, but the thrilling fear of being caught and facing my sister's wrath feels as real to my co-conspirator and I.

Harrison wakes twenty minutes later and comes out of his room while Jamie and I are quietly channel-surfing. She's right, he looks a hundred times better than he did when I picked him up from school. His cheeks are rosy, eyes sleepy and hair sticks out in different directions as he clambers onto the sofa between us for a snuggle. We put cartoons on for him while he wakes up properly and I go to the kitchen to make him something to eat. I mix bananas with applesauce in the blender for a tummy-soothing smoothie and cook him some plain white toast. I remember Doris Morgan doing the same for Deb or me whenever we had upset stomachs.

Harrison doesn't eat the whole lot but he slowly consumes the majority, and he becomes livelier and chattier as he wakes more fully. When we suggest going to Jamie and Joey's house to help Jamie get packed, he is excited for the change of scenery and actually runs to his room to get changed.

There is something very calming about being at Quinn's house for the rest of the day, packing Jamie Batista's life into cardboard boxes and putting it into the back of her car to take back to Angel's. I think it's the contrast between this mundane, repetitive task with the events of my morning, but it could also be the contrast between my current act of selflessness and my usual entirely self-serving, destructive behaviour. Harrison makes some attempts to be helpful but soon falls back asleep on the couch. I insist on carrying all the boxes down the stairs – Jamie is so tiny and some boxes look much too big for her. The day wears on and we finish in the late afternoon.

"That's it," Jamie says, slightly disbelievingly, looking around. Harrison is awake again, poking around in Quinn's DVD collection. "That's everything of mine. The place still looks... full. Complete." She smiles tightly. "My coming here and my leaving hasn't really made a dent at all, has it?"

I loop an arm around her shoulders and direct her out the door without a word. I don't have anything to say. Yes, she's totally right. Like his apartment, Quinn's life is largely unaffected by Jamie's stint in it. She came in, she walked out, and for him, everything has just gone back to the way it was before her. I believe him when he says he has really liked being with her, but I also know, have known all year, that Quinn has never been as involved in this relationship as Jamie wanted him to be. He has been with Jamie to be with _someone_ because he couldn't be with Deb. Poor Jamie was never going to be enough. Deb Morgan is not someone that can be replaced.

Harrison is so much better by now that when he asks for Chinese food for our early dinner I happily agree – I am thinking rice for him, another of Doris's cures for upset bellies – and drag Jamie out with us to help get her mind off her breakup. We laugh and talk and try to teach Harrison to use chopsticks. It's a great end to an insane day. I am tired from my sleepless night and my exhausting day but the fun and comforting presence of family sustains me.

"This is really nice, Dexter," Jamie comments as we finish eating. She folds her napkin over the edge of her plate. "Thank you for taking me out. I really needed it. And for your help today. Now I never need to go back there."

"It's my pleasure," I assure her, and it is. I am happy to be doing something nice for someone else. I expect nothing from Jamie in return. I will take nothing from her. I will promise nothing that I can't give, directly or indirectly. I am being nice for the sake of being nice. It feels good. Now, to transfer this lesson to my relationship with Deb.

Jamie drops us back at my apartment and I take Harrison inside while she drives off. I pack fresh clothes for myself and my son into a bag for our continued stay at Deb's. Harrison asks why Dan, his imaginary friend, still doesn't have his own bag. I get a text from my sister: _Tell bitchface to hide her skanky ass, Joey's bringing me home, staying for coffee_. I sit down on Harrison's bed while he natters away, swapping t-shirts I have chosen for ones he prefers. I open my text conversation with Hannah and realise, with some surprise, that I have _barely_ thought about her all day. It's like I kissed her goodbye this morning and left my whole awareness of her there in Deb's kitchen. It's been a crazy day but it's not as though opportunities to think about her haven't presented themselves. My kid got food poisoning – surely the word 'poison' should bring Hannah to mind, but it didn't. Both Elway and Clayton spoke about her, and though the name registered as familiar, I don't recall even picturing her face. The situation was tense, I remind myself, and my focus was on talking mine and Deb's way out of jail time. But it's weird, isn't it? To love someone, to be planning an illegal getaway with that someone, and when something huge and unexpected happens to throw that plan out the window, to not even think about them?

I text Hannah and tell her to hide in the spare room so Deb can bring someone home. I sigh and watch Harrison select socks. Saxon's death and Vogel's escape today is absolutely _not_ what I had planned. I was meant to kill them _next_ Monday and plant murder weapons with Hannah's blood to make it look like she was killed by Saxon. I didn't get that chance. I suppose I still can do it, plant the weapons somewhere else and set up a scene to look like Hannah was massacred by Saxon and her body disposed of. But it's a risky effort. This shouldn't matter, she is my lover, she should be worth the risk, but images of my dream last night, Deb dying at the hands of my enemies when I had my back turned, make me hesitate. The way to be with Hannah fully is to shut down the chase for her, which will only happen when she is caught or thought dead, but if this action will bring unwanted attention (from, say, Elway or Clayton) to my family, or if the time wasted setting up Hannah's fake death leaves my family open to harm from Vogel, then obviously there is no choice to be made at all. Once before I had to choose between Hannah and Debra. My choice has not changed. I am just desperately hoping, wishing, that I will not be forced to make that choice again. I so badly want to keep them both.

Packed and ready, I have Harrison take another dose of his medicine before I drive him over to Deb's. It's just after sunset and starting to get dark but I recognise the car in the driveway as Quinn's. My son is getting dozy again so I carry him to the door and look through the window panel as I reach for the doorknob. I freeze before I touch it.

Deb and Joey are sitting together on the couch, talking. His arm is stretched across the back, her legs are crossed, her hands are clasped around a mug, and the way they are facing each other is demonstrative of their comfort with each other. I miss this. I miss being someone she is safe and comfortable with. It was only last night that she fell asleep on my shoulder and I felt exactly as Quinn must feel right now, but that seems a lifetime ago.

Quinn must say something a little too meaningful, something that transcends the light tone of the conversation, because Deb looks away and tries to smile it off. It's a hint for him to back off and an opportunity for him to save the conversation and pull it back into friendly territory, but he doesn't. He takes the mug from her hands and leans aside to put it on the coffee table. She knows what he's doing, I know what he's doing; she watches him warily, and even from this distance I feel a flicker of familiarity to see emotions moving and churning behind her eyes. She's alright. The blankness, whatever that was, has passed. I'm relieved. I don't even care that it's Joey that's made her feel better.

As I watch, he reaches out to cup her cheek and pull her gently closer. Deb watches him tensely until their mouths meet, and then she closes her eyes. I shift Harrison to my other hip and turn back to the car.

"Daddy, we just got here," he mumbles tiredly. "Where are we going?"

"Just for a drive, buddy," I say quietly. I buckle him back into the backseat of Deb's car and drive aimlessly for an hour. I find myself at a beach, the kind tourists don't bother with because it's not pretty or easily accessed but will be perfect for my purposes. I carry my sleeping son out to sit with him on the sand. The waves break somewhere out there in the dark, and I stare into the night, looking in the direction I know Cuba to be.

That's where I'm sending Hannah next week, and where I've said I will one day meet her. That's where my life will slowly shift to centre upon. That's where my little boy will go to high school and meet the love of his life. He'll get married on a Cuban beach and invite Deb, Astor and Cody to come and stay. Deb will bring Joey Quinn. She'll be smiling. He'll be annoying, no doubt, but it won't matter if Deb's smiling. I breathe the salty sea air, feeling _okay_ about that. Deb and Joey Quinn... I guess it could be worse. Does this mean she's given up on pursuing me? I picture Deb and Joey kissing and I am not jealous – well, maybe a little, but only because he gets to be sitting next to her right now and I don't. I want her to be happy. I want her to smile again.

I watch Harrison's little nostrils flare rhythmically as he breathes deeply in his sleep. Maybe... Maybe the universe is being surprisingly kind? Maybe I am getting what I asked for? The future I wanted with Hannah _and_ the chance to maintain my relationship with my sister _and_ for her to be happy. Until now I haven't managed to find a solution that gives me all three. I have promised Deb I will not leave her until I know she is alright and that I will never leave her forever, but if she has someone else, maybe I can go sooner? It's what I wished for.

 _Be careful what you wish for_.

I frown. I squint into the darkness, at Cuba, and try to feel excited. I must be too tired. I feel... I don't know. Not much, honestly. I remind myself of what I am hoping for: the future I wanted with Hannah _and_ the chance to maintain my relationship with my sister _and_ for her to be happy. I still don't feel anything. It's the dream – why am I not delighted? I have to repeat it to myself silently five times before I notice the _ed_ on the end of _want_.

I find the notion that my relationship might be moving into past tense confronting, so I carefully take Harrison back to the car and drive back to Deb's. By the time we get there it's been almost three hours since I left, and Quinn's car is gone.

I unlock the door gently and carry my son inside. It's quiet. At first.

"You're back," Hannah comments, partly in relief and partly in annoyance. I look around and spot her at the computer. I wait for the feeling of comfort, pleasure or delight at seeing her. It doesn't come. Instead I see Vogel in the forefront of my mind, telling me how she poisoned my father by dissolving a lethal dose of his own medication in his drink. Exactly as the woman before me tried to kill my sister. I swallow and try to fight the revulsion I experience at this correlation. I find myself still looking around until I notice the light on and the door open to Deb's room. I sidestep on my way over to Hannah just so I can get a glance through the door, and get that feeling of comfort and pleasure from seeing Deb sitting on her bed looking at photos. She's here. She's alright. I will go talk to her soon. Hannah demands, "Where have you been? And Harrison? He looks-" She seems to start saying one thing then changes her mind. "Tired. He should have been in bed hours ago, Dexter."

"I took Jamie out for dinner," I explain quietly, leaving out the drive to the beach. "Harrison loved it."

"Meanwhile I've been holed up here," Hannah replies venomously, voice also low, as she follows me to the spare room, "hiding like a rat while your sister has people over for _coffee_. I was just stuck in here with _nothing_ to do, couldn't make any noise-"

"It's her fucking house," I answer, cutting her off. That silences her, and I tuck Harrison into bed and leave him to sleep. I shut the door carefully and turn back to Hannah. The gaze I face is contemptuous, and I reflect on my choice of words and realise my mistake. But I won't accept it _is_ a mistake – it's a truth Hannah seems to have forgotten, and my only wrongdoing is delivering it as harshly as I have. "She's doing us a massive favour by letting you stay here. It's completely unreasonable of us to even ask it of her. The least we can do is stay out of her way when she wants to actually invite someone inside." She still says nothing, so I rub my eyes and say, "It's two more days, remember?"

"Two more _long_ days," Hannah sighs, relenting slightly. "No, you're right. It's not that long. I'll try my best." I feel like standing on her foot, making her angry to get more of a rise out of her. She's mad – why not see it through? _Stay_ mad. Get what you want out of the other person. Make them understand. Demand they listen and fight them on points they disagree with. Like Deb would. "How was your day?"

Her question brings me out of my contemplations. I don't know where to start. "Um. It was... kind of horrible." She stares at me and asks what went wrong. I see her gaze slide to Harrison's door. I try to remember whether I texted her about my scare with him, but I don't recall. So much has happened since that makes his vomiting episode at school seem tiny and ancient news. "I think almost everything that could go wrong went wrong today. Harrison was sick at school. Deb and I were shot at. Deb went to hospital, I went to _two_ pharmacists and one was fucking useless. Vogel came to the station while I was out and confronted Deb and stole her phone. Saxon killed a woman. He's dead, too, now. Elway saw me leaving the scene of a crime. He told Clayton. Deb and I talked fast enough to keep ourselves out of the backseat of the patrol car. Vogel's missing. What else?" Well, I woke from a truly disturbing dream about sex with my sister and her horrific murder, committed partly by _you_ , by the way, and spent the morning thinking she was going to hate me forever, considering what she'd said to me the night before, and I got a photo sent to my phone that strongly implied my aforementioned sister was kidnapped, raped and in the process of being murdered, and when this turned out to not be true and she saved my life, we watched a deranged old lady lose her son for the second time, and a few minutes after that I made my sister cry by throwing her into a wall and pulling blades of glass out of her, and then I kissed her totally inappropriately and came pretty close to hooking up with her. I think that's the sum of it. Oh – and I involved my once-pure-of-conscience little sister in yet another cover-up. As I was saying, _fabulous_ day.

"Saxon – is dead?" Hannah repeats in a hushed, disbelieving voice. "You said... You said that was going to happen next week."

" _I_ didn't kill him. It was a freak accident." Good thing, too, I consider now, because if Deb's bullet hadn't grazed him he would have rounded that cabinet one second later and stabbed the fuck out of us. "He lured us to Vogel's. Elway followed me, slimy creep he is. He saw me go in and come back out. Thank God, no one believed him. He's sufficiently undermined his own credibility enough by this point that I think we can discount him as a major threat for now."

"I can't believe it. Saxon, dead. It's so surreal. I've been so scared of him, of what he could do to us, and now, he's just gone?"

"Yeah, and Vogel's gone, too. God knows where. But I'll find her. I'll get her and make her answer for what she did to my family. I promised Deb I would. And then there will just be the Marshal to take care of, though he's quite a nice guy. I'm hoping he'll just lose interest in you and go away so I don't have to kill him."

"He wants to see me rot in federal prison and you think he's a 'nice guy'?" Hannah asks bitingly. I resist the urge to remind her that most of the country's nicest people would probably support this same idea.

I shrug. "He swallowed my story. He thinks Elway's a creep. He apologised for suspecting me of wrongdoing. Nice guy."

"Hmm. And what about the rest of your plan? You were going to fake my death and pin it on Saxon when you killed him, but..."

"That's on the backburner," I say without much interest. It was a priority a few days ago. Now, less so. Covering Hannah's ass for her is becoming tiresome. My father taught me to clean up after myself – if Hannah wants to get around killing people and expect to continue getting away with it, she really should learn to do the same. Plus, as I considered on the beach, doing too much to protect Hannah at this point could be detrimental to the rest of the people in my life. I am being watched by both Elway and Clayton, and Hannah's blood turning up on some knife with Saxon's print, some days after his death, might look just a little too convenient to them. I'm not feeling confident about taking that risk right now. It would make most sense just to get her out of the country and leave it at that. "I haven't had a chance to think about it much yet. We'll think of something."

"I hope so, or with people still looking for me it could be more than a month before you come join me in Cuba," Hannah says with a sigh. I say nothing, though wonder at her words. The plan was _always_ that I would take longer than a month to get there, wasn't it? To avoid suspicion. Hannah changes tact. "Well, are you alright? You said you were shot at?"

"By Vogel. But I'm fine. A scratch on my leg from some broken glass, a little cut on my finger, this." I point out the reddish line across my throat. When Jamie asked about it I told her I braked too quickly and hit my throat on the steering wheel. I'm not sure it's physically possible to strike exactly there in Deb's car but she bought it. Hannah notices the teeth mark on my hand and catches my fingers.

"He _bit_ you?" she asks, mystified. She starts to twine her fingers with mine – I imagine her fingers unscrewing the lid of Deb's water and crushing antidepressants. It looks a lot like Vogel's fingers opening Harry's whiskey and dropping in an overdose of his heart medication. Enough to make me inconspicuously disentangle my fingers and fold my arms casually.

"Yep," I lie easily, though the truth shouldn't matter. It's not like I was doing anything questionable when my sister bit me; on the contrary, removing the glass from her shoulder was among the best things I've done for her all day. "I didn't see that coming. Saxon was smarter than I gave him credit for. He knew to expect me and he got the upper hand on me for a bit there. It was lucky Deb was there."

"I can't tell you how much I love it when your stories end with 'and then Deb came along and everything was good'," Hannah says sarcastically, all mock-sweetness and scorn. I roll my eyes and turn away, intensely annoyed. This is why I glazed over the truth of the bite mark. She doesn't fucking understand. She _can't_ understand. That's just how it goes. Deb fixes things. I screw up, my world splinters away into little particles of darkness and it feels like all the hope and light has gone far away, and then she comes along and puts everything back where it should be. It doesn't matter if it's big or small. She fixes it.

Hannah doesn't fix anything. She makes my life complicated, more complicated than perhaps it needs to be. I remind myself that this is the price I pay to get what I want, that I _want_ to be with her and so I must accept what comes with that. Right now I'm finding it hard to understand the logic behind that. I must need sleep.

"Well, it's lucky for _you_ that this time she did, or I was going to be shot in the head," I say finally. "I guess that's all there is to tell. My day sucked." I gesture to the computer. "What have you been doing?"

"Oh." Bright blue eyes sparkle as she glances back at the screen, which features a Cuban real estate site. "I found the perfect place for us. We can move straight in next week."

" _You_ can move straight in next week," I correct, and her expression falls a little. "Harrison and I will get there later. You'll have months to get the place ready."

"I can decorate Harrison's room," Hannah agrees, brightening at this idea. "Soccer posters, aeroplane mobiles? I'll paint the walls blue. I found this great colour online, you can get the paint from the hardware stores..." She sits down again at the computer to show me. I blink, trying to concentrate. "See, isn't it a nice shade? I was thinking, with yellow curtains? It's going to look so cute. And for our room..." It goes on and on, or seems to. The clock tells me it only goes for a minute, but I am sure the clock is lying. "I think it'll be lovely."

"I bet." I yawn. My exhaustion is catching up with me.

"Do I bore you?" Hannah asks, raising an eyebrow. _Yes_. I frown at this unwelcome thought, then decide to let it slide. Alright, yes, homemaking is dull. I don't want to know.

"It's been a long day," I admit. "I'm super tired. I think I'll go say goodnight to Deb and then go to sleep."

"She's been _weird_ this evening," Hannah comments darkly, casting a displeased look in the direction of Deb's bedroom. I follow her gaze and wonder what this means. I only say, "Well, keep reminding yourself: just two days and you never have to see her again."

"Two more nights and you can sleep with me again," she says brightly, and I smile tightly at her as I walk away. No, Saxon might be dead but the other dangers I'm trying to stay abreast of by sleeping on the couch here will still be out there when Deb and Harrison leave for Orlando. That won't change.

I stop at Deb's doorway and knock lightly. "Hey."

She doesn't look up. She's cross-legged in the middle of her bed, surrounded by open photo albums and dozens of loose photographs. There's one picture in her hands. Nearby I see her wallet, open, empty and upended. It's an odd picture to walk into.

While I watch, she lifts a pair of nail scissors from the quilt cover and begins to cut into the photo. I frown and walk in; still, she does not acknowledge me. I ask, "Deb? What are you doing?" but she seems unable to see or hear me. I come to stand behind her and take in the scene properly.

This isn't the first photo she's decided to cut up. She's done it to all the pictures on the bedspread, maybe forty. And she isn't just cutting them up. She's cutting her own face out of each and every one.

I am so disturbed by what she is doing that I reach down and wrench the scissors out of her hand and throw them across the room as if they were infected. The suddenness of this action seems to jolt Deb out of whatever freaky disassociative state she was in when I came in. She finally looks up at me. Her eyes are empty again. I don't see Deb at all inside them. I want to shake her but I'm also terrified of touching her. I settle for sitting down on the bed beside her.

"Deb?! What the hell are you doing?" I whisper, scared. "What's wrong? Why are you doing this?"

She doesn't answer my question. She hands me the photo she was defacing. It's a picture of her from a work function four years ago. Except now her face is cut three-quarters out.

"She was really pretty, huh?" Deb says softly, and the response makes me cold inside. _She_? _Was_?

"Who?"

"Her," Deb replies, taking the picture back and touching her own photographed face. "Debra Morgan. Me, I guess. Or the person I used to be." She drops the picture to the bed and I slowly pick it up. I'm so frightened. I have no idea what this is.

"You _are_ her," I remind her carefully, not sure right now how obvious this fact is. Is this what a breakdown looks like? Is this some kind of identity crisis or cry for help? "This is _you_."

"There is no me." Deb takes the photo and starts to screw it up; I try to get it back off her so she can't do any more damage to it. After a struggle I win, and flatten it out on my knee. The creases are too deep to iron out, the cut is too rough to be taped down and our fighting over it has put a tear down one side, so I don't know why I bother. It can't be salvaged. But I try anyway. I try not to liken this hopeless attempt to our relationship. Deb watches me, placidly bemused. I don't enjoy her quietness, her stillness. My Deb is not quiet or still.

"What are you talking about? _You_ are you. You're here, with me, now." Where you should be. I lower my voice, trying to contain my fear. I convince myself that she is the one that needs to be calmed, soothed. "You're alright, Deb. I've got you."

"I know you do. That's the problem, isn't it?" She actually smiles here, but it's tiny, hollow, and it doesn't make me feel any better. I get the idea it doesn't help her much either.

"Deb-"

"She isn't here anymore, Dexter," she cuts me off. I am heartened to hear her say my name and acknowledge me but terrified of the rest of her proclamation. "Look. She doesn't exist anymore." My sister gestures at a pile of plastic triangles beside her knee. With further shock I realise that these are the destroyed remnants of her bank and credit cards, her licence, her goddamn library card... Anything with her name or photo on it is cut to bits. "She's gone. She might have been gone a long time for all we know."

"She's not gone," I insist, desperate. "She promised. She's here – in here." I reach over and press my hand to her heart. Its beat is strong but slow, calm. Mine must be racing by comparison. I am scared, so scared, of what she is claiming. What she says can never come to pass. My world will end. Deb is the fixer. She is the light. I _need_ her. "You promised you'd never leave me. That's how I know you're still here." This elicits _something_ , a flicker of recognition somewhere deep in her eyes. Her hand covers mine, and for a second, things resemble normal.

"There's no one in here," she disagrees softly. "No one you would recognise, anyway. There's just this shade – this dark, cold, empty shadow."

I am not sure how much more disturbed I can become but she pushes me further. I tighten my fingers over the fabric of her shirt, clinging to her. It can't be, can it? That after everything, after all the trials and fighting and cycles of abuse, she has finally broken open, letting all her light leak out and leaving only the darkness I've always known was hidden deep inside her? How? Why now? This is my fault, I know it, though I have no idea yet how I have managed this ultimate failure without even having been around her for the past several hours.

"Deb... what happened? When did Quinn leave?" I ask, trying to determine a timeline like she and the other detectives would when reconstructing a crime. Except I already know the perpetrator. I just need to retrace my own steps to understand exactly what I have done.

"Can you believe he's still in love with me after all this time?" she asks, and I think, _at least we're back to thinking in first person_ , too soon, because she then grabs another picture of herself and amends to, "In love with _her_ , at least. With who he thinks I am. He didn't say so but I know. He still loves her, the Deb he dated, and he wants her back, but no one told him that she's not here anymore. He's so good, Dexter," she adds, a tinge of desperation to her voice – finally, traces of feeling. I try a shaky smile to encourage her to go on, hoping this is progress. "He's so hopeless and stupid and fucking arrogant but he's _good_. He loves and smiles and forgives. He doesn't judge. You know, he doesn't even care about what Elway said today, about Briggs? He wouldn't let me explain. Said it didn't matter."

She looks for a long time at the picture in her hands. I look, too, and recognise this one as a picture I have in my own photo albums. I loosen my hand from where I have her shirt scrunched at her chest and trace my fingertip across the surface of the picture, remembering this day. It was immeasurably better than the one I am currently living.

"It doesn't matter," I agree, "because he loves _you_. Not just old Deb. He loves _you_."

But she's already shaking her head. She tears the photo in half before I can stop her. "Joey doesn't _know_ me anymore. I don't, so how can he? You can't love what you don't know. And sometimes when you do know, you can't love that, either." She flicks one half away. "He's one of the good guys. What I became, it would disgust him. Would he forgive me if he knew what I did to La Guerta?" She twirls the other half of the photo in her fingers. "Could he let that slide? What if he knew how I've covered for you? I compromised so much of what I was, became so different from him... It doesn't matter," she says abruptly, starting to rip the remaining half into ever smaller pieces. I watch in distress as the Debra of the past is taken violently apart by present-day Debra's own fingers. "I sent him away. It was for the best."

"Please stop that," I beg quietly. Little fragments of my sister escape her destructive hands and shower down upon the bedspread. She seems not to hear me.

"I wasn't going to, for a minute," she confesses. Her hands work furiously. "He kissed me, and I closed my eyes and for _one moment_ , I thought I would be okay. We were alone and he loved me and I felt like nothing else mattered. I felt like I was good enough to deserve to be happy. Everything was perfect." She pauses, and takes a few attempts to go on. Emotion is coming back to her, slowly, and it's starting at her throat. "Except me. _I_ was the thing that wasn't right. He was giving himself to me and I reached inside myself to give something back... but there wasn't anything there. I'm empty. There's no Deb left to go around. I had nothing to give him. I don't know what it was that used to be there but it's not there now. It never occurred to me that it could run out." She chokes on a surprised laugh. "I'm so fucking hung up on _you_ that when a great guy throws his heart at me I don't even have it in me to reach out and catch it."

She doesn't know what it was that went missing but I do. It's that magic, that _Debness_ that I am so in awe of and so reliant upon. I don't want to believe her that it's gone but right now I can't feel it either. I am devastated. Yesterday's heartbreaking conversation was shattering but this is so bad that I feel all the little shards of me break into even littler, sharper pieces. My soul must look like Vogel's china cabinet, or Deb's photo. Still, looking brokenly at my sister, hers must be in an even worse state. She can't even _find_ hers. What a sorry pair we are.

Deb can't tear the pieces any smaller and now continues speaking, voice still flat, "Don't look like that. It's not your fault. I thought it was, for a long time, until today, but it isn't. It's mine. I keep _giving_ myself to you, no matter how many times you say you don't want it. I keep forcing it into your hands," she says, taking a handful of photos and hurriedly shoving them one-by-one into my grasp to demonstrate, "without listening to what you're telling me. I keep giving you more _me_ and thinking you'll do something different. Then I realised today that that isn't going to happen. I'm so fucking stupid. I shouldn't be surprised. You are who you've always been. You don't want me."

"That's not true," I whisper forcefully, catching her hands with both of mine as she throws the last picture at me. "I love you. I want you around, all the time. I never want to be away from you."

She stares into my eyes, looking for something. I don't blink; I don't want to stop her from finding it, because it's there, whatever it is she needs – it has to be. I love her more than anything. She's got to be able to see that in me. I shouldn't have to say it.

"I gave you everything I had, Dexter," she murmurs, every word slicing through me like knives. "I gave and gave and now I'm nothing. I'm _empty_ , just this shell. This shade that draws a gun on her own brother in a cemetery, or seriously considers shooting an old lady for something that can't be taken back. I was life and love and happiness and strength and morality but I gave everything to you. I suppose you must still have it, somewhere. But it's not here. Not anymore."

She slides her hands out of my limp ones and shuffles herself to the edge of the bed. I watch dejectedly as she gets to her feet and recovers the nail scissors I threw. I didn't think things between us could get any worse but they have. I have finally done it. I've broken my sister for good. This means the end for me, too, obviously, but right now that doesn't even register with me. I feel only remorse, gut-wrenching remorse, for the destruction I've wreaked upon Deb's life and her spirit. In this moment I picture the little girl that curled up on my floor to hide from the shadow monsters, and again the night our father died, trusting me to take care of her, and I cannot believe I have betrayed her so completely and done this to her. I force myself to look at the ruined photograph still on my knee. It's ripped, cut, crumpled, bent; unfixable. I watched Deb's hands do this but it wasn't her. It was me. _I_ did this to her. I took everything she ever gave me and used it up, let it go to waste on my useless self, without ever giving anything back, and now she is ruined.

I am the worst thing I can think of.

Deb takes the nail scissors back to the bathroom. Even her steps are small and hopeless. I watch her back and I am overwhelmed with regret. Every step away from me kills me – it's like she's disappearing even now. I cannot allow her to fade completely. I stand quickly and reach her within two long strides. I seize her from behind in a crushing embrace, slotting my chin over her shoulder. I press my cheek against hers and squeeze my eyes shut, wishing as hard as I know how to. I want this all to be different. I want her to come back. I want to take back everything wrong I have ever done to her. I want to change all the moments that led to this. I want to change _me_ , because that's what it all boils down to. I can wish everything else better but as long as I am who I am it will keep happening. Right now I want nothing more than to be normal, a good brother, a real person who doesn't kill people in his spare time and kill his sister with his heartlessness.

I send my wish to the gods, the universe, whoever listens to these sorts of things, and open my eyes. Nothing is changed. I am a fool. Wishes are for children. My soul is still in pieces all around, and Deb is right – she is empty now, her magic run dry. No degree of closeness to her is enough to bring me back together.

The hug has no power over Deb tonight, and doesn't make me feel better, either. The lean body in my grasp is unusually limp. I hold her even tighter, desperate for a response, even a snarky 'fuck off, you're squishing me', some sign that she's coming back around. But she just sort of hangs there in my arms, waiting. A doll.

"I'm sorry," I whisper. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."

It's just words; it fixes fuck-all. I wish there was something more, something better one could say, but there isn't. There's no word for going back and changing your own devastating impact on the life of someone you love. Deb is silent until I run out of sorries. Then she says, emotionlessly, "Let me go, Dexter."

"Am I hurting you?" I ask, only now remembering her injuries from this morning. Between my chest and her shoulder I can feel the padding of the sterile dressing over the worst one.

"No. Just let me go."

"No," I sulk, stretching my fingers to wrap around the edges of her so no one could pull me off even if they tried. I expect – no, I want – her to be the one to try. I wait for the fight that always comes at this point. I am left disappointed.

"Please," is all she says, and even that is without conviction. I shake my head tightly without breaking contact between my face and hers.

"I don't want to," I tell her. "I want to stay. With you. With my sister."

"You can stay. But you won't find her here."

"Stop saying that," I plead. "I know you're still _you_. You're going to be okay. You have to be. You _promised_."

"Yeah," she agrees quietly, "but I _am_ a liar sometimes."

I release her suddenly, unduly horrified by her echo of my own words. I meant that as a kind of mood-lightening joke. I am upset by this notion that the oath I've taken as fact for the past few days might not be set in concrete. A promise is a _promise_. Sacred. Even to me. Maybe especially to me. You don't get to take back a promise. That's why I wouldn't promise to stop hurting her, last week when I told her I wanted to – because I know I can't keep it, so I can't make it in the first place. I can't accept that she might not have meant it when she said I'd never lose her.

"You promised," I whisper fiercely. Deb, newly free of my embrace, turns to face me. "You said. You don't get to leave me, not fucking ever. I wish I could let you, I know I should, but I can't. I need you and you have to stay. Things are fucked up right now, I know. But in the end you _have_ to come back. You're my sister."

The faint anger I see in her eyes isn't my first choice of emotions but it's emotion nonetheless, and that'll do for now.

"Your sister's fucking gone, Dexter. Accept it."

"She's not. She's here. I know her when I see her; I'd know her anywhere, and I see her right now."

"She's _gone_!" Deb insists angrily, voice rising. I hate what she's saying but I am awash with relief to see her getting mad with me. I've cast the line and she's taken the bait. Now to reel her in. Carefully. Slowly. And hope she doesn't struggle free from the hook. "She gave everything she was _to you_. She compromised everything she believed in to keep your secrets and make you happy. She gave until it hurt and kept going until she bled herself dry. She loved you too damn much."


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I have nothing particularly witty to add.
> 
> Author's notes: The songs for this chapter are Hello and Going Under by Evanescence and The Ground Beneath Her Feet by U2. The song for the first chapter was The Last Time by Taylor Swift and Gary Lightbody, and the song for the whole fic is Bring Me To Life by Evanescence. If you can be bothered to play those songs on YouTube or something while reading this chapter, it'll shed light on the place I came from while writing.

My sister turns away to go into the bathroom. I automatically reach for her as she grabs the door handle. To my shock and hers, she reacts to my unexpected touch by lashing out with the nail scissors. I feel the sharp point drag across my forearm, and we both freeze and watch in fascination as the skin splits and a thin line of blood rises from inside me. Deb looks up at me suddenly.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, horrified with herself, and slams the door between us. It takes me a second to catch up with what's happening. I'm in the bedroom, she's in the bathroom. Without me. _With_ the little scissors.

"Deb," I call through the door suddenly. "What are you doing?" She doesn't answer; her silence only escalates my fears. I bang twice on the door with my hand. "Debra? What's going on? What are you going to do?" Still, nothing. "Please, talk to me. Just fucking say _something_."

"Go away, Dexter."

I release the breath I was holding. I bang again on the door. "Open up, Deb," I order, and she refuses. "Open it or I'll knock it off the hinges."

"Go ahead. I'm right behind it, you'll crash it into me." The defiant attitude is super-annoying but also soothing, a suggestion of returning normality. The washed-out, flat Deb of a minute ago would not have challenged me. My Deb does, every day. I hope this means she's taken the bait, swallowed the hook and I've nearly got her to shore.

"Deb-"

"Fuck _off_ , Dex!"

"Just open-"

"Here's something new," Hannah's voice drawls from behind me. Her voice is so unexpected in this intense moment, when all I am thinking of is Debra, that I actually jump. It's akin to being abruptly awoken, or interrupted in the middle of a hugely engrossing movie. I spare her a bewildered look. She stands in the doorway, arms folded, humourless smirk playing across her face. "'Saying goodnight' becomes a screaming match and a slamming door. Must be the Morgans."

My entire emotional range is already devoted to loving and worrying about Deb. I don't have anything for Hannah except frustration with her inability to help or understand. She can't do anything to help; she wouldn't even want to if she could. She's even more useless than I am. So I don't want her around in this situation, while my world is coming undone and my sister is a whole door away from me with something sharp. I snap at her.

"This doesn't concern you. I'm fucking busy." I pound again on the bathroom door. "Debra Morgan, open this door."

"I can see that," Hannah answers me in a sugary voice. "I can see now why our conversation about our future must have really bored you. You needed to come in here and take care of more _important_ matters like-"

"Make her go away," Deb demands from inside the bathroom. She's like a fucking child; I'm no better, really.

"Deb, let me in. You have to come out eventually," I insist, hoping this is true, deciding to try to ignore Hannah.

"I do not. You can't make me."

"Don't fucking try me, Debra."

"You two are just so _sweet_ ," Hannah comments now, and I lose it with her, growling incoherently. I turn to her, pressing my hands to the sides of my head, trying to keep it all together and not just run over and kill her to shut her up. My self-control, my light is locked away from me, and my urge to eliminate that which wants to draw me even further from her is powerful. A little sensible voice in my head reminds me I will regret doing that when things return to normal and I am not mad anymore. I keep my feet where they are.

"Shut _up_ , Hannah!" I shout. Her eyes are wide. "Just stop talking. What do you want? Hmm? What do you want from me? I don't understand why you're standing there, judging me, or why you're even still with me, if you can't accept that _this is who I am_. I'm not normal. I'm incomplete. God fucked up when he was putting me together and missed a bunch of essential parts and they're _all_ on the other side of this door." I slam my open palm against the offending access point. "This is what's important. Not fucking paint colours. Deb is part of me, just like my dad and my brother and my kids. My people are bits of me and even though I never get anything right with them I can't give up on them. I need them. I need my sister. It's always going to be like this. So, please, if that's not something you can live with, just go." The ultimatum slips out unexpectedly. Hannah inhales sharply. I shake my head, upset and distantly worried at what I might have just set in motion. "I won't be angry. It's your choice, it always has been. If you really love me you'll accept me as I am and go to bed so I don't say anything else hurtful, and everything will be better in the morning."

Everyone is silent when I finish. Hannah is clearly shocked by my outburst and especially my ultimatum, and I wonder whether she's just going to turn on her heel and walk out the front door. She struggles briefly, then, visibly yielding, says very quietly, "I'll see you in the morning, then. Goodnight."

She walks away. She takes my whole awareness of her along with her. I've forgotten her before I hear the quiet, distant click of the spare room door closing. Deb doesn't hear that. She waits a few seconds, then asks, "Is she gone? Proper gone?" Her voice betrays that she is every bit as shocked by my words as Hannah or I.

"Come out and see for yourself," I suggest, daring to hope.

"She isn't. I don't want to come out. I don't want to look at you." She's distinctly insolent, and it's exasperating.

"Fuck it, Deb! You're being such a fucking pain. Just open the goddamn door! You-" I stop myself as my voice rises and forcibly pull myself back a little, determined to hold it together to avoid getting hysterical and setting back the progress I have made with my fragile little sister. I am not sure how I do it. Self-control comes from Deb and she has none left to give me, so this comes from somewhere else. Fighting with her and making a demand she doesn't want to meet is getting me nowhere. I decide to prioritise my concerns, and somehow I manage to keep my voice even as I ask, "Deb, are you going to hurt yourself?"

"Bit hard without a self to hurt, isn't it?"

"Okay." I take deliberate breaths and try to think logically, but I feel like rational thought has abandoned me completely. This is the PTSD, something functional in my brain offers. This is psychological trauma – the crisis of identity, the blank expression, the disassociation from her past self and actions, the emotionless state where she didn't even know I was present, even the violent reaction to being touched; it's extreme but perfectly typical of her condition. "I hope that means no." I let my head fall forward against the door. Things are bad but I can fix this, I have to. Deb is the fixer of the two of us but right now she's indisposed and she needs me to do it instead. I want, so badly, for her to open the door and let me be near her again, but clearly this is _not_ what she wants or needs right now. She needs me to stop _needing_ her to a point that she is emptied of all that she is. I need to stop thinking of her as mine and start thinking of her as a person who needs help. Which she does. She is so broken – the time for selfishness is well and truly passed. I need to help protect her, but not because I want her for myself, because it's right for her. My gaze is directed down and falls upon the gap between the door and the floor. "Alright. You don't need to come out if you don't want to, but I'm still worried about you. Put the scissors under the door, would you?"

"No. I'm not going to do anything. And they go in the bathroom."

"I know they do. We can put them back later. Please, just do it." I crouch down and squeeze my fingers underneath the door so she can see the fingertips. I hope she doesn't decide to stab them with the scissors. "Please, Deb. Please?"

"You're worried about _nail scissors_?" she asks. I detect amusement, maybe some irony, in her tone. I don't understand the joke but am gladdened by the slow recovery of her sense of humour.

There's a long moment of silence and I wait. Then I feel the cold of metal against my skin and I hook my fingertip through the ring on the end of the scissors. I pull them to my side of the door. Such a mundane household tool, yet how many times today have I been afraid of scissors? I thank her.

"Good. Now you can go away."

"I'm not going anywhere," I say, settling against the door. "I'm going to stay right here. I'm not giving up on you."

"Why?" Deb asks scathingly. "How many times do you need to be fucking told, your sister isn't here?"

"I heard you. I'm just going to wait for her. She always comes back."

"Not this time. Everything she was, you've got. Somewhere."

I rest my head against the door and think on this. It's true, she's given me way too much, of herself, of her time, of her love, of her soul. What happens to it once I get hold of it? Is it really some _where_? Can it be given back?

All at once I know the answer.

"Can I tell you about her?" I ask hopefully. Deb scoffs; the sound comes from exactly opposite me, and I know she's sitting on the other side of the door, listening to me even though she's acting like she isn't.

The tone is dismissive but I detect the curiosity, too, as she says, "You can tell me whatever the fuck you like."

So I do. Awkwardly, at first. "Well, my sister, she's beautiful. Really tall, the same height as me, actually, and she has really long brown hair that's always so soft. She's, uh, funny, and-"

"Tall with brown hair. Sounds like something really special."

"I'm not finished. That's just the stuff on the outside, that anyone can see. But I don't see that. I barely notice what she looks like. She gets mad when I don't notice her new haircut but I guess she doesn't realise how little it changes how I perceive her. When I look at her I see _more_. I see who she really is, thirty-four years of life lessons, good times, terrible times... I see the ' _everything else'_. It's everything else that makes her so..." I struggle to think of the right word. I think of one but it sounds stupid. My instinct is to skate over it, choose something less meaningful, skip the meaningful stuff altogether if possible. But that's not the point of this exercise. There can be no holding back. "Enchanting. She's enchanting." I wait for the obnoxious response, but Deb is silent. I go on, "She's so goddamn stubborn, even when it's to her own detriment, but she's loyal, driven, honest and strong. She's the best person I have ever known. When I'm with her, I feel _better_ , even if we're fighting or screaming at each other. She makes me _alive_. I feel like I'm a better person just for being in her presence. She has this beautiful, pristine, compassionate soul that gives off its own light. I swear, it's something more than just a strong conscience. She always knows the right thing to do."

The cut on my arm has only a slight bleed but enough blood has now accumulated on the surface to allow a drop to run down towards my wrist. I wipe it away. I keep talking into the silence, feeling less insecure and awkward about opening up.

"She's so pure, so perfect, it makes me envious and proud and frightened all at the same time. I think, how can she look at me? How can she stand to have me around, when everything about me is so wrong? Can't she feel me pulling her down? I keep waiting for her leave me, knowing one day she'll have to, to survive. I know how bad I am for her. But she's even more wonderful than I can describe, because right when she should leave, she gives me a reprieve. She builds me back up when I'm low, takes care of me when I'm hurting, helps me find my way when I'm lost... Right when I feel my most worthless she can change everything. She tells me what I most need to hear and makes me feel like I have a reason for existing. Things get bad for me sometimes, when I lose control, and everything goes dark and my entire being starts to drift away from me, out of my control, but if I can find my way back to her... she doesn't even have to do anything. She can just look at me, or say something, or be there. Everything falls back into place. She's so much more powerful than she could ever know. She's gravity and she pulls me back to my centre. I remember who I am. There's no me without her. My sister is a force of nature – she gives me life, purpose... I'm the worst person either of us knows, but she still loves me. I don't know how. All I know is she is everything. I love her so fucking much, you have no idea."

I rub my exhausted eyes. Deb is still quiet. I have no idea whether any of this is getting through to her, but it's the best I can do. She gave me everything she was and all this time I've been holding onto it, jealously keeping her all to myself. All those times I've thought, I love her but I don't need to tell her how much – I was wrong. I _do_ need to tell her. She _needs_ the words. She needs to hear the love in return.

So, slowly, I force myself to give it all back. It's difficult but it becomes easier as I go. I tell her everything she's ever needed to hear. I tell her how grateful I am for her, how regretful I am for the times I've hurt her, how it hurts me to see her upset, how I feel to be near her, even though I never used to acknowledge I even _have_ feelings... My relationship with her has shown me that I definitely do, and I tell her so. I tell her how afraid I am of the concept of a life without her. I talk explicitly about my dark and frightened thoughts from earlier today, when I thought Saxon had her. I share how little I know I deserve her, yet how incapable I am of letting her go. I admit that often I stir her into a rage on purpose because I'd rather fight with her than see her walk away. I share how close I've felt with her since our fight last Monday. I tell her how she amazes me so often with her capacity to forgive. I confess that I only noticed that our eyes are the same colour a week ago, and explain how special this detail is to me, this visual cue to the whole world that we are linked. I tell her I'm sorry that Harry brought me into her life, because often I think I'm the only one that benefitted from his impulsive decision. I mention that Vogel's implication was all wrong – it is not Harry's memory that has the most influence over me, but Deb herself, and she should never worry about that. I would always choose her.

"My sister is my hero," I say finally, wrapping my arms around my knees. "Not just because she's saved my life a bunch of times but because she's everything I could ever want to be. She's absolutely perfect. I love everything about her. She makes me so, so mad sometimes; I still love her exactly the same. I don't tell her anywhere near enough. She's upset with me because she thinks I don't want her but that's crazy. I wish I _was_ her. If I knew how to change I would change to be exactly like her. I would be pure and good and honest and light and I wouldn't need to destroy someone else to sustain myself. I wouldn't need to hurt the person I love most in the world."

I stop talking. That's it. I've talked for twenty minutes straight, and that's everything I can think of to say. I shift, feeling stiff from sitting still so long and from my beating earlier today. I wait and wait for Deb to respond. I really don't know what she'll say. There's no obvious answer to such an outpouring of emotion. As the silence stretches on, I expect to start feeling awkward and self-conscious for baring so much, but that feeling doesn't come. I don't feel vulnerable at all. It had nothing to do with me. It was all about her, making her feel better, giving her back to herself after holding her hostage for so long. I feel... clean.

Deb's answer _finally_ comes, her voice hoarse: "Can you get the meds that Joey hid behind the coffee?"

"Yeah. Sure." I struggle to my feet. I'm grateful for this tiny miracle – Deb is going to take her medication willingly. Perhaps it's starting to really hurt. I fetch the pillboxes and return. I knock lightly on the bathroom door.

Deb opens it very slowly. Each extra millimetre of visibility is as good as a breath of air after being held underwater, and then she is standing fully before me and I am alive again. She's back. Her deep hazel eyes are so full of _Deb_ and I am strongly motivated to grab her and never let her go. But I don't touch her. It's something selfish I do, hold her when _I_ want to but reject her attempts to do the same in return. I hold out the medications and say nothing. She takes all three boxes without letting her fingers touch mine.

"Did you mean all that?" she asks cautiously. I nod. She looks at me for a long time. I stay still to keep myself from seizing her hand or pulling her close. Deb's eyes hold mine for so long, until she speaks again. She drops her gaze, embarrassed. "How can you say you love me _that much_ , but you still dropped me today at Vogel's?"

I don't have an answer straightaway. For me, the physical love she was looking for and what I feel for her are two different things. I don't lump them in together; she does. She closes the door again, locking me out. This time I don't bang on it or order her around. I just stand there.

"I didn't mean to drop you," I say finally, slowly. "That's never what I want to do. I never hurt you on purpose."

"Then why?" Deb asks through the door. I sigh and turn away, looking at the bed, all covered in defaced photographs of my beautiful sister. I walk over and pick up the one I tried to save. I drove her to this, through all my demented love, my lies, my cruel mixed messages, my unfair demands. No more. No uncertainty, no lies, no demands.

"It's two things," I admit. "In those moments when you push for something more, I get scared. I'm afraid of us changing. I don't want to lose you and the unknown comes with that risk. I wouldn't survive that loss."

"What's the other thing?"

"I'm your big brother," I remind her, coming back to the door. "It's my job to look after you. I have to protect you, sometimes even from me, or from you. I'm the very worst thing for you – I'm not chocolate icing, Deb, I'm poison, and I cause you so much pain. Imagine how much worse it would be if you let me closer. I can't let you take that road. It hurts me to hurt you but I have to look out for you. I make a lot of mistakes and I confuse you and I'm sorry. But I try, I swear I do. I would do anything for you, Deb."

She thinks about this for a long time. I hear the boxes being opened and water running as she swallows the pills. It sounds like there is something in the sink that the water rushes over, like dishes. I hear the soft thump as she sits down again against the door. I crouch down opposite her.

"What are you thinking about?" I ask, wishing we were one, so I could know everything that ever passed through her head or heart, so I could be all that she is and experience what it is like to be _good_ and _right_. She takes a while to answer.

"I'm thinking... I hate fighting with you," she says eventually. "I wish we could stop. I wish we were _mature_ enough to stop provoking each other like little fucking kids. You know, I don't think we ever fought like this when we were kids."

"No," I agree. "We're definitely getting worse with age."

"Do you think... we _could_ stop, if we wanted to bad enough?" Deb asks, the tiniest dare of hope brightening her tone. "We could promise. We could mean it."

"That might be a tough one to keep. You can be fucking difficult, you know, and I know I frustrate the hell out of you."

"I know. But it would be worth the effort, wouldn't it?" Of course, it would. "We can promise to never fight again. You said you would do anything-"

"I would," I interject.

"Right, so it shouldn't be a problem for you," Deb says, all business. "We both know I'm the weak link in this deal, so the main issue will be keeping me from losing my shit with you, but we can work on that together. You'll need to keep reminding me. I'll have to learn some discipline and be strong. God, it's hard enough _now_ to keep myself from punching you sometimes, when you're being a selfish fuck. But I'll learn. I'll learn to be strong."

"You _are_ strong." I look at the damaged picture. It's bent and torn and ruined, but you know what? It's still in one piece. It's still what it always was – a photo of someone amazing – and though its battle scars are on display for the world to see, it's still beautiful, still whole, still special. "I'm willing to try if you are."

"Go on, then," Deb challenges. "Promise."

Spurred on by her provocation, I withdraw the pen I find in my pocket and use the door as my table while I write across the back of the photo: _Deb, I love you. I promise to never fight with you again as long as we live. Dexter_

I slide the photo underneath the door. Done. All we've done in the past year, since the buffer of my false life fell away and she came to know me fully, has been to fight constantly. The guarantee of a conflict-free future with her is too good to pass up, and it doesn't even occur to me that between her natural volatility and my psychopathy it will be near-impossible to maintain. It's worth the try. We'll make it happen.

Deb must read it on her side of the door. She says, very softly, "I promise, too. And I love you."

It's all I want to hear. I stand and stretch my aching limbs out.

"I'm going to go and get some sleep," I tell her. "When you're ready to come out, you should do the same. It's been a very long, hard day. Tomorrow I'll take you to the bank and the transport office and get your cards replaced. You'll need them to get yourself to Orlando."

I tidy off her bed so she won't have to when she decides to let herself out of the bathroom. I hide the whole mess underneath the bed and turn on the lamps. I switch off the main light as I leave, ensuring I finally say the "Goodnight" I came to tell her. She echoes me. I check the locks around the house, turn off the other lights, and fall asleep almost as soon as I lie down on the sofa.

I am too tired even to dream. Several hours pass in blackness. It's some silly hour of the morning when I drift unwillingly back to wakefulness. I try to keep sleeping but it doesn't come back. I open one eye to the dark living room and at first cannot understand what has woken me. There's no light source, no movement, I am sure I heard no noise. I feel no anxiety. I feel okay. That's when it occurs to me to slide my half-open eye towards Deb's door.

I should have known. She's standing in her doorway, very still, watching me. Coming to sleep on the floor, to sleep without bad dreams? I breathe slowly in simulation of sleep and let my eye close. Nothing would be better right now than to have her willingly near, comforted by me instead of torn apart. I wait.

"I know you're awake," she murmurs, breaking the illusion. I open my eyes. "Are you always awake?"

Yes. But I pretend not to know what she means. "How are you feeling?" I whisper in response.

"I don't know," she confesses. She comes closer. It's dark but I see that she hasn't changed out of her clothes from the day, and one of her hands is behind her, maybe self-consciously tucked into a back pocket. "I feel… I'm me again, I guess. Thank you, for not giving up on me; for looking for me until we found me again. But I also feel… lost, in a different way. I don't know." I hear the conflict in her strained whisper, and I can hear the tears. She's been crying. Maybe still is. "I don't know what's wrong with me, Dexter."

The crack in her voice when she says my name crushes my heart, and I sit up on the couch.

"There's nothing wrong with you," I assure her gently. "You're perfect."

"Am I?" Deb asks. She stands at the end of the sofa. It's too dark to make out her expression. I hear the brokenness in her voice. "Then why am I like this? Why am I in love with my brother? Why don't I feel better when he pours his heart out to me?"

"Deb." I don't know what else to say. I don't _know_ why she's in love with me – I wish I did, because then maybe we could change it. "I don't know what you remember from earlier tonight, so don't freak, but you just had a breakdown. It might take more than a few hours to feel normal again."

"I _do_ feel normal again." Deb's breath quavers in her pause. "This is what normal feels like for me lately. I feel confused, uncertain… anxious… desperate. Alone. With Joey something snapped, and then I was sitting on the bed with the photos feeling numb, but in the bathroom it slowly came back. And it hurts, so much, Dexter…" She starts to cry afresh, and I start to get up, but she tells me not to. "Don't. Please, just stay there. Just listen." She draws shuddery breaths, and several attempts to continue talking are impeded by tears. I feel so helpless just watching her stand there and fall to pieces. So badly I want to hold her and make everything alright, but I've already done everything I can think of and it wasn't enough. She manages to speak, occasionally halting for heart-wrenching sobs. "I heard all the things you said. I never knew... I know how hard it is for you to open up, and I'm glad you said it, I really am, and I _know_ how you meant it, but there's this stupid part of me that still wants it all to mean more. I'm such a fucking _asshole_. I'm sorry," she sobs, covering her face with the hand not in her pocket, ashamed. "I'm sorry…"

"Don't be," I say, aching for her. "Don't ever be sorry, not to me. I owe you so many sorries that _you_ saying it to _me_ is kind of redundant."

That makes her laugh, just one cough of surprised laughter through the tears.

"I just feel like such a bitch," she tells me haltingly. "I had no idea... you cared so much. I can hardly believe you really think all that about me. That I'm _perfect_ , that _you_ rely on _me_. It's all I ever thought I wanted to hear from you. And still... God, I'm such a screw-up. I still want something else. So I'm scared, Dexter. I'm so scared you're going to hate me for not being better yet."

"That's stupid," I dispute. "I could never hate you, no matter what you did. You could turn me in and I'd just be really pissed off. I still wouldn't _hate_ you."

"What if I was a truly awful person?" Deb asks shakily. "What if I compromised who you are? What if I took your choices away and made you sacrifice what you believe in?"

"Then..." I think for a moment, unable to work out where this is going. "Then we would be even." I frown at her silhouette. It trembles in the darkness, quiet sobs still wracking her whole body. "Deb, just talk to me. Tell me what you're thinking."

"I'm thinking about you," she whispers. "I'm always thinking about you. I don't know why I'm so fucking fascinated with you but I can't get you out of my head. I don't _want_ to think about you; I don't _want_ to want you. I know it's wrong and crazy and I know it upsets you but I can't do anything about it. It drives me insane. No," she corrects, "it's already driven me there, and now that I'm back I don't where the fuck to go next. I'm so goddamn lost. I'm drowning, all day, every day. When you seem to reciprocate I grab onto it and pull myself up for air and for a second I can breathe again – and I know that's never what you mean by it," she adds hurriedly when my mouth opens to defend myself. "I know. Honestly, I know. Knowing doesn't stop me from mistaking it _every time_ and knowing doesn't change how it feels when you tell me no. I die when you pull away. I'm not mad, Dexter; you have every right to want whatever you like. It's me. I'm the fuck-up in this instance. I don't know what's wrong with me. I just want it to stop. I don't want to do this anymore. I want it to end."

I don't particularly like the finality of that suggestion. "I don't want _you_ to ever end. You'll get better, Deb. You have to. Things can't stay bad forever." I try to smile at her, even though she can't see me. "We'll get you through it. I'll help."

"I might be beyond help," she warns miserably. I shake my head, unable to accept that one.

"There has to be something. Therapy? We can find a doctor that doesn't want to see you kill yourself. We could go on a holiday, somewhere peaceful and beautiful. Swiss Alps?"

"Think we can ski my stupidity away?" she asks wryly. She looks away. "How long have I been this fucking stupid, Dex? You've known me longer than anyone. When did I get like this?"

I don't agree that she is stupid but for me, everything went wrong with her at the same time: the moment she walked into the church and caught me killing Travis Marshall. That night is the turning point in both our lives, when my careful mask fell away and her world was twisted upside down irrevocably. Everything since has been a slow, progressive march towards _this_ , tonight, the utter obliteration of Debra Morgan and the resultant end of Dexter Morgan. I came home to find her already gone but I've pulled her back, and now I don't know whether that was for the best. She's back from the brink, better, Deb once again; but Deb isn't the Deb of a year ago, and all I've done is pull her back into the whirlpool of pain, misery and disorder that has become her life and identity.

"We're going to get you through it," I assure her again. "Whatever you need, anything."

She looks back at me. "I'm an awful person, Dexter. I need to ask... I have to know..." Emotion builds in every unfinished sentence, blocking her. She shakes with the effort of saying, "I do need help."

My heart bleeds for her. I shove away the thin blanket that was covering me. There's enough space beside me for her to sit down, so I beckon and say, "Come here." Deb hesitates for a long time, so I add, "If you want to." She nods and steps over, looking relieved. She starts to turn, the wrong way for someone about to seat themselves, and beside my hip I feel the compression of the cushions under the weight of her knee. I feel her trembling palm on the centre of my chest. In one swift motion she swings herself over me, stabilising herself with the hand, settling her other knee on my other side, and almost before I realise what she is doing she is sitting on my lap, facing me. I grab her elbow, shocked by this overtly sexualised move, though I'm stupid for not guessing. "Uh-"

"I know this isn't what you meant," she whispers immediately, "and I'm sorry, I'm _so_ sorry for doing this to you. I... I'm the biggest fucking bitch. I just..." She struggles to continue as another sob quakes her. I feel her hand quivering against my breastbone and her knees tighten involuntarily around my hips. "I don't know what else to try. To make me feel _okay_."

I should prise myself away from her but I can't, not while she's tearing herself to shreds and she's come to me for help and comfort. Distressed, I extend a hand to her face. She leans into my touch desperately, closing her eyes tightly. Her cheek is wet with tears and her skin is warm with the red flush of humiliation.

"Deb... This is a _really_ bad idea," I whisper, stroking her cheek with my thumb. She nods into my hand and kisses my palm hurriedly.

"I know, I know," she whispers back. Her new tears spill over my fingers as they roll down. "Everything is so fucked, Dexter. Everything's all wrong. And I'm so sorry. I know I'm asking way too much, I know I have no right. I just want to feel something different. I don't understand what's wrong with me, but maybe, if we..." Pain and terror of the unknown rip through her and she sobs into my hand. "I don't know. I don't know what else to do. But I need to see. I need to _feel_."

I get now what she meant about taking my choices away. I release her elbow and cup my hand over her other cheek so I am holding her face with both hands, and I lean forward so our foreheads touch. My poor damaged little sister. She clutches my shirt in her hand and cries for some time while we stay like this, and I wish I had the power to pull the sadness and confusion out of her head and into mine. The sobs slowly subside and she gets herself under some measure of control.

"I want to try this," she says finally, flatly to avoid emotion dragging her down. I slant my gaze up to meet hers.

"I don't," I answer, to which she murmurs, "I know, I know, I'm so sorry..." I go on, "I love you too much. You'll hate me forever and I'll never be able to get you back from this."

"I won't hate you. I might hate me, but that won't be new. And I won't be able to get mad at you, remember, I promised." Deb's fingers slowly loosen from their urgent grip on my shirt and her forefinger begins to trace little circles. "You said you would always choose me. You said you would do anything for me. You said I could kill a thousand people and you'd still love me. You said you would be like me if you could. Would, it's always would. Would you really? It's never _will_. Your actions don't match your words, Dexter. If you _would_ choose me then fucking choose me. If you really _would_ do anything, now's your chance. Please – I know it's too much, I know I'm not allowed to ask for this – but _please_ don't drop me now. You said," she reminds me, voice hitching, "I'm everything."

"You _are_ everything," I agree desperately, trying to make her see. "Everything is too much to risk losing for the sake of a gamble."

"Aren't I worth the risk?"

Deb's soft question is soul-tearing. My hands drop from her face and land lightly on her thighs. I can't answer. There is no answer. Her sanity and happiness are of course of a higher worth than mine, and so if by compromising myself like she's asking I can bring hers back then I have no excuse for refusing. At the same time, her sanity and happiness are what's on the line in this game and it's high stakes, the last game of the night – the odds are stacked against us and there will be no opportunity to win back our losses. It's all or nothing. I miss chess.

It's just sex, I tell myself as Deb looks into my eyes with tangible fear in hers, waiting for permission. It's an act and before Rita I was able to perform it convincingly without attaching any real emotion to it. Maybe I can again. With Debra. The person I know most intimately, the person who has known me the longest, the deepest. Maybe I can sleep with her and not kill us both with its wrongness, its emotion. I doubt this completely but still hope. Isn't she worth the risk? It's such a loaded question but 'worth' is the key word, and her worth is immeasurable.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I still can't speak to tell her this. Hating myself, almost hating her for making me, I sit back from her and I slide my hands slowly up her legs to her hips. I can tell straightaway that she really didn't think I would comply. Her expression tightens with surprise and her breaths become sharper, faster when I turn my fingertips under the hem of her top. With terrified eyes and shaking fingers, her one hand fumbles painstakingly with the top button of my shirt. I feel like she looks – shaky, afraid. The line is not far away and we're running straight at it like it's a finish line when really it's a jagged cliff that falls away to an unknown abyss.

Deb finishes with the first button and moves to the next one. I feel sick with dread I cannot escape but there's no one to tell. I get a grip on the hem and slowly pull her shirt upwards. She shivers, with apprehension or self-disgust, I have no idea. When I did this same thing earlier today there was no self-consciousness, no concern about our dignity. All I was thinking about then was getting the clothing away to see her wounds. Her bare skin, the strap of her bra, none of this seemed improper then. Now... it means something different and I don't like different.

I pull the shirt as high as her breasts and stop. She'll need to lift her arms if I'm to get it off of her, and she has one at work on undressing me and one still behind her back. She's still crying, still shaking, and I know she's not enjoying herself any more than I am. But she won't stop. She struggles with the third button for a long time but won't give up. She's driven, terrified of where we're going but desperate to get away from where she's been stuck for so long. I feel so... down. Low. I feel trapped, like in my nightmares. I place one hand across her stomach, dispirited, and think of the horrible dreams where I let her come close and she dies. I wonder now whether those were premonitions. Is that what's happening right now? Will I kiss her and unconsciously harm her, like I buried a knife in her flesh in the dream? Will I fuck her and then watch her suffocate under the overwhelming power of my own darkness? In my mind her blood flows, warm and tacky, over my fingers and down onto our laps, and I distantly hear the powersaw, the gunshot, the choking, the muffled screams for my help... It's too much. I lose my nerve.

"Deb, I can't," I whisper hoarsely, hanging my head with disgrace and disgust. Not only have I been considering having sex with my sister, which is pretty fucking bad, I have dropped her now from the greatest height imaginable. I am glad my father's ghost hasn't thought to stop in lately. It feels so wrong, too different. It feels like taking advantage of her. I'm so certain she won't be happy with the result that it kills me to take her down the path. I slip one hand around behind Deb's waist in a sort of distraught cuddle. Who knew I could be any worse to her? "I'm sorry, I know I said..."

She surprises me. "It's okay. It's alright. I've got you." She gives up on my shirt and wraps her arm around my neck. She clutches my head against her chest and presses a quick kiss to my hair. The embrace is the warmest, most beautiful place to be and I close my eyes and just breathe her in. Her scent is the most familiar one in the world to me. Usually I don't notice it, like anyone else would simply not notice the particular smell of their sibling, but right now I do and I indulge in a few seconds of noticing nothing else. A tiny escape from this terrifying turbulence. Safety, security, home. Deb. The rest of the world is too much right now. I press close to her, letting her shield me. "Shh, I'm here. I love you. Shh, it's alright." At first I don't know why she's saying this. Then I realise that I am crying, uneven sobs threatening to break out of me. She holds me like a child and I cling to her. She whispers reassurances. My hand starts to slide from her stomach; my head tucked neatly under her chin, she releases me to grab my hand and hold it tightly in place between us.

Her tight hold and her momentarily strength holds me together and I gather myself after a few minutes like this. I stay still, never wanting to move. My fingers are either entwined with hers or playing thoughtlessly with the stray edges of the medical tape that holds the sterile padding over her lower injury.

"I'm sorry," I mumble thickly against her bunched shirt. The words fix nothing, I know, but she should still get to hear them. Deb turns her head to rest her cheek on the top of my hair.

"Don't be," she says softly. " _I_ ' _m_ sorry. I asked too much. I'm still asking too much. I'm still asking." I slowly pull away and look at her, hoping she can see the silent plea in my eyes. Don't, Deb. Don't ask. We're so close to each other right now, surely she can read it. I can't tell if she sees it in mine but I see the bleak, forlorn expression in hers and I feel myself fall another few pegs. How deep does depression go? I suppose she's the one to ask. "I need to ask you for something else. Something else you can't give but you have to." She strokes my face, tenderly wiping away tears. "I can't stand seeing you like this. I can't stand that I'm doing this to you, hurting you. So please, help me stop."

She withdraws her arm from behind her back. What she holds doesn't belong in her hand, which is perhaps why she brings it to her stomach and presses it into _my_ hand. I blink and suddenly understand. I'm so fucking stupid. Why didn't I wonder why she was keeping her hand hidden? I try to wrench my hand out of hers but she uses both hands to force the handle of the knife into my grasp and close my fingers over it.

"Deb – what the hell are you doing with that?" I demand, my voice a low hiss. I am losing the battle of hands and bring my other one to help as she twists my wrist to point the blade at herself.

"It's been sitting in the sink for a bloody week," she reminds me, and I close my eyes briefly, furious with myself. I recall the confrontation with Vogel and Saxon outside and I recall my own blood running down its blade. I recall dropping it in the sink in Deb's bathroom to hide it from Harrison. I'd intended to clean it up and put it back in the kitchen. I am continually slipping up. All these emotions, the pressure from so many sides, have taken their toll on me and my ability to do this well.

My sister wants to die. My darkness, the invisible toxic cloud that surrounds me and permeates the lives of everyone who spends too much time close to me, has taken her. Exactly as Brian warned me it would.

"You gave me the damn _nail scissors_ and didn't think to mention _this_ was in there with you?"

"You didn't ask. Stop fighting me, Dexter, you promised." Her words still me. It occurs to me that our struggle involves a sharp object that is already pointed at her vital organs and my wrenching motions are becoming dangerous. I keep my hands tense, one under hers and one on top, ready to resist if she tries to pull back. "I've looked at this knife _every night_ for the last week and wondered whether I could do it. Each time I couldn't. I couldn't, I'm too fucking chicken-shit to go through with it. But part of me wants to. It would solve so many problems, for us both, Dex-"

"Fucking shut _up_ , Debra," I snarl at her. I'm so angry. Angry with her, for talking like this, but mostly angry with myself for not seeing this coming. I suspected it before, when she had the little scissors, but for some reason I thought that once she gave them to me the desire to hurt herself would also go away. I'm angry that it didn't occur to me that this might not be the case. And for leaving the goddamn knife in her bathroom. "I don't want to hear this. I'm not going to allow it. There has to be something else, something we can do-"

"I've already tried everything. I tried pretending, I tried finding someone else, I tried drugs and alcohol and self-indulgence, I tried being angry, I tried _everything_. There's nothing else. I thought _this_ could fix it," she says, nodding at the space between us, clearly implying the notion of sex, "but it didn't work. That's not your fault; it's no one's fault. But that's it. I'm out of options. It's too late."

 _Too late_.

"It's _never_ too late," I whisper fiercely, moving my hand from hers to grab the back of her neck. I told her I'd tranquilise her if she spoke of this again but I don't have a syringe on me. "Not for you, not for me, not for us. You _promised_ I would never lose you. You _promised_."

"I'm sorry," she says. I know she means it. "But I die every day, Dexter. If it has to happen I just want it to be final this time. And I know you won't let it hurt. I know you'll be quick and careful with me." She smiles, for real. "I know you."

She loosens her hands from around mine and lets hers fall away. I am the only one holding the knife. I am holding a knife to my sister and she wants me to use it to end her. Brian said it would come to this, said it was inevitable, but somehow I still can't believe that this is where our story goes. I can't believe that the little girl on my bedroom floor grew up to be this woman whose deepest desires are all the things I can't do for her. Harry, why did you do this to her? Why did you insist on bringing that blood-soaked, ruined little boy home to destroy your beautiful baby daughter?

"Don't," I beg. "Please don't ask me to do this." Anything, anything, even the sex, would be preferable. "I can't do it."

"You can," she urges. Her hand finds its way back to my breastbone, a comforting touch. "You can do it, for me."

With my grip on her neck I pull her close and our foreheads touch once again. _No, no, no_... This _cannot_ be our last moment together. She _cannot_ mean for me to take her life away and live with that for the rest of mine. And _now_ , no less, after such a heartbreaking week? What am I meant to look back on? _Nothing_. I realise that the only logical thing to do, if I do as she's asking, is to follow by turning the knife on myself. I can't live without her. If she dies I have to as well. But Harrison will wake up first tomorrow and come out to find us. Astor will get the phone call that we're not coming up and her birthday will be ruined. Cody will be disappointed and abandoned by another father. Hannah, I guess, will take care of Hannah, probably disappear. But my kids...

There's too much to live for. For both of us.

"No."

"Dexter." Deb's voice is as firm as mine. "Put me out of my misery. Either kill me or kiss me. I don't care anymore which."

A kiss? A kiss is little, beautiful, something that can be given. It wouldn't be like sex. It wouldn't hurt her. It's a way out and I want to seize it, but I hesitate, thinking hard, looking for catches. I've been trying so hard to avoid this but she's got me cornered and if it's one or the other, my choice is no choice at all. I revisit my thoughts from a few hours ago, outside her bathroom. For the first time I wished I could be changed. I wished I could be different. Some change is out of our control but some is conscious, a deliberate decision to be somebody better. My father, I'm sure, would encourage me to throw her off this very instant and refuse to take part in her tragic game. Do neither. Tell her to get a grip. But I am not my father and neither is she. Harry Morgan is not here. There's just me, wanting to be a better man, and Debra, wanting to be brought back to life. She's telling me she wants to die but she doesn't mean that, not really. She wants life. I want life. I can rescue hers and restore mine.

I take a chance on her.

I drop the knife over the side of the sofa. It lands quietly on the rug. Deb must understand, because our next movement is so fluid – she pushes on my chest and I fall back, propping myself up with one elbow while my other hand on the back of her neck pulls her down with me. She holds herself up off of me with both arms; her hair spills over her shoulder to block all other sights but her. Our mouths are millimetres from touching.

"You sure?" she breathes, clearly still worried. Her hand on my chest inches upwards until her fingers can hook themselves over my collarbone, like she needs something to hold onto. She's still scared, scared of being dropped and falling forever. I won't do that to her again.

"Ten seconds," I warn her. Oh God, oh God, oh God... "That's it."

She nods in agreement, the ends of her hair tickling my face. "Done." And she leans down to kiss me.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. When I make millions from my novel, its resultant sequels and film franchise, I might buy some of them.

The instant I feel Debra's lips press against mine I freeze as though I have been electrified. Oh, God, oh, god... I suppose that I am not prepared for it, despite inviting her to go ahead. She is tentative at first, as freaked-out as I am and probably put off by my lack of response. She is gentle and the pressure is light as her mouth moves over mine. I'm not sure but I think I feel the dent in her lower lip where she bit herself today.

The seconds tick by, and Deb's soft lips continue to uncertainly encourage my paralysed ones, and it's after about five that it occurs to me that _we are still alive_. We haven't spontaneously combusted, we haven't been struck down by the gods for our sinful behaviour, we are not sobbing messes in each other's arms. I haven't stabbed her. She isn't bleeding, asphyxiating or dying; she isn't screaming at me for being a despicable person and allowing this. I'm not throwing up over the side of the sofa. Our father hasn't risen from the dead to condemn us, ground us and send us to our respective rooms. We are _okay_.

We're going to be okay.

Once that thought takes root in my brain I feel my entire being relax and I am able to review the situation I am in. I am kissing my sister; or, rather more truthfully, she is kissing me. And it's not that bad. Certainly not the shitstorm that I anticipated. I don't feel dirty or scared or worthless. I feel... new. Alive, warm... Safe. For a millisecond I am invulnerable. I feel _close_ to her. She is open, showing her whole self in this moment, and I am drawn to that, as always. But I won't take anything. I can be different. I can choose not to take from her, to experience her without stealing her away from herself. I can choose to reciprocate and give as much as I use.

Deb seems to give up on my unresponsive lips after seven or so seconds and begins to pull away, but I promised her ten. My right arm is bent beneath me, supporting my weight, and I push forward from that shoulder to close the space between us. I begin to kiss her back.

Her eyes, hazel to match mine, flutter open in unsure surprise to look into me. Her uncertainty perturbs me, making _me_ less sure, and I back off, lowering myself a little. I don't want to scare her. I don't want to do anything that she doesn't like. Our kiss breaks apart; her lower lip sticks to mine. Her exhalations are warm and moist. I know this carbon dioxide has travelled around her body in her bloodstream – the oxygen it once was has been inside her heart, has been pumped to a muscle where it's done its job keeping her functional before being transformed into CO2 and has done a circuit of her entire body. Breathing it is the most sensual experience I know. I never want to breathe other air again. I'll poison myself on this instead.

Debra's eyes search mine, the same critical look she gave me today when she saved me from Saxon and Vogel and glanced over me for injury. She doesn't look upset. She isn't angry. She's just worried for me. She's the _little_ Morgan; she shouldn't be worrying about _me_. My hand is still on the back of her neck. I stretch my thumb to stroke the lobe of her ear affectionately. I hope she understands – I'm okay, and she will be, too. At the unexpected touch she closes her mouth and inhales through her nose deeply, a quicker breath than those before it, and her eyelashes shadow her eyes as her gaze flashes down to my mouth. Did she feel that, too? That glimpse of unbelievable closeness, ultimate sanctuary, previously unknown to either of us? Perhaps I imagined it. Or perhaps I can find it again. I hope it's not an unfair assumption to think she wants to keep going. There's still three seconds on the clock. I slide my hand from her neck up through her hair and pull her back down to meet me.

She doesn't resist. Far from it. She rocks forward compliantly. Our lips crush hurriedly together and we open to one another immediately. Mine and hers, it's alien and new but also strangely familiar. We've never done this before but we don't miss a beat. If I push so does she; if I tilt my face to the right she mirrors me and we kiss ever more deeply. It could have been choreographed.

I quickly realise that she's good at this. The way her mouth moves confidently, the motion of her tongue, it's telling of expertise, but like me, this is totally new for her, and I sense that she is running on instinct more than anything else. Trying not to think too hard. I'm doing the same – thinking would be an epic mood-killer, all things considered – but it does occur to me, distantly, that Deb is probably a lot better at kissing than I am, and I hope she isn't disappointed or judging me. If she says anything mean I guess I can pull her hair or push her over. I _am_ her brother.

My tongue licks across her lip and, yes, that cut is still definitely there. She tenses momentarily as though this stings. I didn't mean to hurt her. Deb's hand on my chest slides down to my sternum and she presses hard. I gasp with pain as she reactivates the pain from the blow Saxon dealt me earlier. It does nothing to slow things down; she catches my lower lip between her teeth and looks me straight in the eyes. I have no idea how much of my confrontation with Saxon she witnessed but now I have to wonder whether she saw him drive the bolt into me. The vindictive sparkle behind the hazel suggests she did; she also told the Vogels she'd seen Saxon beat the hell out of me, which fits that timeline. She heard and saw a lot more, then, than I realised. I wonder what made her stand there and watch for so long without interfering. I wonder whether she considered letting them have me. The thought of that, coupled with the fact that she didn't, has me clench my fingers in her hair and push myself up to feel more of myself against her. She is warmth, life. She could have let them kill me and she chose to save me. She is goodness embodied and I can't get enough of her. I turn my head to pull my lip from her bite, pretending it doesn't hurt, and come back to push for more. We kiss deeply and desperately. Nothing is close enough. Our lips are wet with the other's saliva and when I swallow it's kind of incredible to think that it's not all mine. She pushes me right down and, no longer needing the arm to support myself, I wrap it around her back and pull her tight against me. The bend at her hips is unnatural and probably not comfortable; her leg slides out from under her and I hear her foot knock the handle of the knife on the floor. I frown, distracted by concern, but the skittering sound that follows tells when she kicks it away to safety.

Deb's mouth explores mine and I can barely believe how enjoyable it feels. I don't know now why I have been so scared of this. It's different but it also isn't, not at all. It's Deb and all the feelings I usually experience around her, only magnified. I'm up close instead of standing back behind a panel of glass. It's only different in the way observing a lion at a zoo is different from observing one on safari. It's majestic either way but one is definitely more meaningful than the other.

I run my hand across the bare skin of her back, careful of the day's injuries. She's smooth, warm. I have never been this close to her, to me, to goodness and lightness and humanity. Last time she was on top of me was seven days ago and she was punching my face into the sand. This is a definite improvement in all respects. It's frigging weird, I'll grant that much, but not at all bad. It's weird that I'm enjoying her when I thought I would hate this. There's a purity to our fluid, innate motions that I did not expect, a purity I would have previously only associated with Deb alone. It's weird that I am feeling anything at all, though I have noticed since our fight a week ago I have been feeling, increasingly, more and more. So much has happened and so many confronting moments with my sister have forced me to look very hard at some very ugly sides of myself. In this moment I don't feel ugly. I don't feel self-conscious. I feel like some scrubbed-clean version of my usual self.

Right now I think I feel _everything_. I said I wanted to change, to be like Deb. To feel everything must be what that's like.

To feel everything is indeed what it is to be Deb, and she feels both the extremely good and the extremely bad at the same time. Her hands have moved all across my chest and shoulders; now they slide to my neck and close suddenly around my throat. When I open my eyes she pulls back and straightens her arms. Immediately I miss her closeness but she is quick to make me forget that. She leans forward to shift her weight over her hands, pressing down. She restricts my breath straightaway. My lungs draw on the windpipe to suck air in but there is no open path. Automatically I grab her wrist with one hand. Her expression is one of cold determination. She wants something.

God, does she want to kill me? I can't tell, though she's going about it the right way if she does. She wants every fucking thing tonight, everything she shouldn't want. I expect this is some kind of experiment, though I can't work out what she hopes to achieve. My lungs burn. My other hand is still on her back, holding her loosely, and her shirt is still bunched at her ribs. Even with the edges of my vision blurring it doesn't look right. I begin to feel dizzy from the lack of oxygen to my brain and tug the hem of the shirt back down to her hips. Once I stroke her side, smoothing the creases of fabric back into place. Debra glances down at my hand, disbelieving. She presses harder on my windpipe, shifting her weight to apply it all to the one hand, and runs the other, almost seductively, along my shoulder, along my arm. The touch is feathery and leaves goosebumps in its wake. She gets to my forearm, where she cut me earlier with the nail scissors. I'm starving for air and panic begins to creep into my awareness but I work to stave it off. I don't need to fight her. I'm more than instinct and reflex. All the same I cannot stop my hand from pulling on her wrist but she's got the double advantage of gravity and a free airway. I make very little headway. Deb's hand stays on my throat and the night gets darker.

It's so ironic, I realise distantly as I pull fruitlessly on her wrist. I have been so worried about my darkness suffocating her that I forgot to consider the growing dark inside of my sister. Wouldn't it be tragically poetic for _her_ darkness to suffocate _me_?

Her soft touch becomes firmer as she approaches the fresh scab, and, eyes narrowed, she rakes her fingernails across its brittle surface. It comes away with a harsh stinging sensation. I try not to wince.

"Tell me it doesn't hurt." Deb's whisper is loaded with malice.

"Doesn't hurt," I reply voicelessly, strangled by her hold. A sensible voice in my oxygen-craving brain warns of the danger of provoking a broken-hearted, physically exhausted, emotionally deranged woman when she holds your life in her hand. I don't listen. I'm suffocating but I know her. I can agree with only one thing that Oliver Saxon said, and that is that Deb will never follow through with this. She only killed Maria La Guerta because it a choice between her and me. Outside of the line of duty, both professional and familial, Debra Morgan doesn't have it in her. And I'm not scared of her. She'll hurt me, push me around, punish me, but she won't let me die. No matter how she changes, Deb will always choose me. And if she doesn't... I won't know about it. But she will.

She can't do it. Annoyed, lip curling, Deb sits back and withdraws her hand from my throat. Air rushes down my raw throat and into my burning lungs as the pressure is released, but I only get one breath before she knocks her fist into my sternum. She doesn't put a lot of force behind it but fuck, it hurts. I cough as my diaphragm spasms and drop a hand from her waist to cradle my throbbing torso. It's not at all life-threatening but now I feel like she might be trying to kill me. I detect no remorse on her face, even as I start to curl up in pain. My knees are trapped beneath her; her knees tighten around my hips as she leans forward to look closer at my face.

"Now tell me. Tell me you don't feel shit." She doesn't seem put off by my pitiful coughing. Lovingly, inquisitively, she caresses my face, peppers my cheeks and nose and brow with little kisses – an angel to offset the spiteful little bitch she's also playing. I wonder if she thought the same of me today when I shoved her around, pulled shards of glass from her back and spoke so callously to her, then treated her so tenderly, held her so close and told her she was mine. The tables turned, it's easy to understand how thrown Deb must have felt by the contrast. I recall a similar discussion, too, an argument that kept being rebuffed with 'it doesn't hurt'. And that ended well. Not. Deb brushes her fingertips over my lips as I struggle to draw a full breath. Her other hand is still on my forearm; she finds the tender bruise on my ulna bone where Saxon struck me with the bolt and digs in. How much did she fucking see? "Tell me you're dad and Vogel's pet psychopath and you don't feel any fucking thing. Go ahead – tell me you're invincible."

She's my sister; the instinct to goad her is automatic. "I don't..." But I am only just getting my breath back. I gasp between coughs as they slowly subside. "It doesn't... It doesn't hurt." Success. I feel momentarily like I've won a round. Deb twists my arm over and reaches along it to take my hand. She laces her fingers with mine and brings both to settle on the cushion beside my head. The gentle intimacy of holding her hand calms me and I feel my breathing even out. For a moment our palms are matched, then she disentangles her fingers and curls them into my palm. A searing pain immediately follows. "Alright, damn it, it fucking hurts," I snap, wrenching my arm out of her grasp when she digs her sharp nails into my still-tender teacup scar. "What do you want to hear? It hurts, you win, I _feel_. I'm mortal. I'm fucking human, alright? Jesus."

Apparently it's exactly what she wants to hear. The corner of her mouth quirks, just the tiniest twitch, suggestive of her trademark lopsided smirk. She stops trying to hurt me. I barely notice. The hint of her smile, after the darkness I've just seen her through, is like sunshine breaking through dense black cloud after a terrifying storm.

Again it's like we've practised this. I raise my legs beneath her to tip her forward and open my arms to catch her – I'll never drop her again – and she grabs my shoulders to pull me up to her. We meet in the middle, mouths drawn to the other's like they belong pressed tightly together. We make out like teenagers. It's adult at a glance but childlike in nature, a desire to be loved and to connect. It's hot, it's chaste, it's heavy, it's gentle, it's bitter, it's sweet, it's beautiful; so many contradictory things all at once, like me, like my Deb, like us. It's like nothing I've ever before experienced and I feel it all. It feels like living. It feels like being whole.

My hand travels to the small of her back and pulls her even closer. Her hands move to my face and hold it still as she tilts her head aside to try another angle. It's like kissing her only gets better and better; more and more I feel like I see straight into her soul, the very essence of what is Deb. The more of it I see the more purified I become. I tighten my hold and kiss back eagerly. She wraps her arms around my neck. It's fun and easy and absolutely nothing like the forced, terrifying attempt at sex before. Sex is complicated, for us both, attached to very complex and misunderstood feelings and memories. _This_ is not sexual, not in the slightest. Sensual, intimate, emotional, but somehow not sexual, not romantic, not at all. The notion that this could lead there doesn't enter my mind at first. Mentally I am not even aroused, and if I am physically, I haven't noticed. For her part, Deb also keeps her hands away from places sisters definitely shouldn't touch. There's nothing sexual about our desperate need to be close, always closer.

I reflect on this for only a moment and I am glad for it. I don't _want_ to look at her differently. I don't _want_ to lead her down a path we can't stay on. I am amazed by how wrong I was – I've been scared of letting her change things because I thought there were two possible outcomes: either we would hate each other for it or we'd enjoy it too much and destroy each other that way. It didn't occur to me that there was a third option, where nothing changes at all. Because nothing is changed. I still love her exactly the same as I ever have. I only see her more clearly and get to be closer than before.

I promised her ten seconds but I've lost count of how many minutes over we've gone by the time we stop, and that's only because Deb's hand drops thoughtlessly from my chest into my lap. She realises immediately where her hand has ended up and whips it out from between us like it's been burnt. She breaks the kiss abruptly and we breathe hard, eyes locked. Hers are wide, frightened again.

"Shit, I'm sorry," she whispers fearfully. "I didn't..." She's still enveloped in my arms and I feel her begin to tense again. "Dex, I don't..."

"Shh, it's alright. Don't mention it," I say hastily.

"No, I didn't mean to do that, to..." Nervously she glances down at the front of my pelvis, the reality of what she tried to enforce a few minutes ago possibly only now occurring to her. She looks back up at me, confronted and pained. The rightness of just before is slipping away for her. Panic drives her pulse, breath and speech ever faster. "Oh, fuck, this is fucking weird, isn't it? And I've just made it all fucking _worse_ and I'm making it even more God-fucking worse by talking about it-"

"Deb. Stop. Stop thinking. It's fine. Forget that and just breathe," I instruct, and she tries to comply. I don't want to lose the peace between us, the innocence of this moment. I move one hand to stroke her hair away from her face. The ends of several strands are stuck to her lips. I give her a few seconds to calm a little then ask, "You okay?"

Slowly, uncertainly at first, and then more assuredly, she nods. "You?"

"I'm fine," I say, and she tries a smile. This attempt doesn't quite work. She takes a hand from my shoulder to touch her own lips.

"I don't... I... I thought... Was that weird?" she asks anxiously. She doesn't wait for my answer. "I can't think straight. I thought... it would be different. I don't know, I thought we'd keep going, but... I've imagined this in my head a hundred times and..." She looks worried. "You didn't want to do any of that."

"It was... alright." Actually, it was an awe-inspiring experience. "I didn't hate it."

"But you didn't want to do it, before it started," she reminds me, and reluctantly, I am honest with her and shake my head. She holds my gaze with hers. "You didn't want to and you did it anyway. For me."

"I'd do anything for you," I say automatically, though it's become apparent in the past few minutes that this is an automated message that accurately reflects the depth of my feelings for her but does not accurately reflect the facts. I will not do _anything_ for her. I won't fuck her and I won't kill her. Beyond that, yes, I'd do pretty much anything.

"You didn't have to."

"You kind of took my choices away," I point out. "The knife was quite persuasive. I didn't see that coming." I frown. "Do me a favour and don't do that again."

"I'll try not to." She pauses, then shyly she asks, "You didn't hate it, in the end?"

"No, it was... nice," I say lamely. "Unexpectedly. Anyway," I divert, suddenly self-conscious with the difficulty of expressing the true radiance of our connection, "it was that or lose you, so I was always going to enjoy it more than the alternative, wasn't I? There wasn't a choice." I feel almost dirty, downplaying the kiss, but I can't go back and change anything, which means she experienced all the same things as I did and I know she must have felt as much of my heart as I felt of hers. She knows. I don't need to say it.

"There's always a choice."

"Not for us," I insist, and Deb's next attempt at a smile comes closer to being a real one.

"Not for us," she agrees softly. She leans affectionately into my hand when I continue to stroke her cheek. For a little bit she's calm and contemplative, but then the worry returns and her expression closes down with fear. I ask her what's wrong and she admits, "I think I'm scared again, Dex."

"Of what?" I press, and she looks away, nervous and embarrassed.

"Of being an erratic asshole with no goddamn idea what the fuck she wants." She takes a hand away from my shoulder to run fingers frantically through her hair. She is whispering but even her whisper rises in pitch and pace as she continues, "Of doing to you _exactly_ what I hated you for doing to me. Dexter, I'm so sorry. I... I just..." Her next breath is shuddery as control starts to elude her. I shush her and catch her hand when she keeps combing it roughly through her hair. "I know how this goes, I know what's meant to come next, I know I manipulated you into this and I know I made you think I want to, but Dex, I don't know anymore. This was so good and I love you so much for it, believe me, but you were right, you were right, going further..." She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth and chews it, the very picture of concern. "I'm... I just... It _would_ be a big fucking deal. I thought I wanted it but now I just don't know. God – I'm talking about sex with you, _with you_. I fucked _your brother_. Heaps of times. Fuck, fucking shit-fuck..." She pulls a hand from mine to cover her mouth, mortified with the topic of conversation, but we're in too deep for there to be any reprieve for her dignity now. "You must think I'm such an epic screw-up. You know, I've known all along it was a bad idea? I knew it was fucking wrong and weird and reckless. I thought I wanted it anyway, but I think the reason I wanted it was to get exactly what you just made me feel with just a kiss, that's all I ever really wanted – just to feel close to you and like you love me and like we belong to each other. Just all that feelings crap."

I always love Deb exactly the same but in moments when I feel protective of her it's almost like I love her more, but I'm sure I'm just more aware in those moments of how much I adore her. Tears have started streaking down her face again. I want to remind her that I've _always_ been close and I've _always_ loved her, even when I didn't know it, but she won't listen to my attempts to quiet her so I have no reason to expect she'll hear anything else I have to say.

"I don't want to wreck this," she says shakily, rubbing the new tears from her face. "You're being so great. But I don't want to confuse you or be a fucking cock-tease, I just... I-I just realised it'd be nothing like my stupid dreams because it'd be _real_ and we'd be _naked_ , it just never really struck me that we'd have to take our clothes off, you're my fucking _brother_ , and to be honest I don't think I want to see you naked. And holy mother of fuck, I'd need to go digging through my fucking drawers for condoms and, fucking _yuck_ , I so, _so_ don't want to roll one of those onto _you_. Ugh, gross. Gross!" She waves her hands as though trying to waft the thought away and squeezes her eyes shut to block the mental image; I cringe distastefully while she can't see me. I hadn't even thought of all that but it seems creepy to me, too. She opens her eyes suddenly and grabs my face, back on her self-loathing track, and continues hurriedly, "But I'm scared I've led you on, I'm such a fucking bitch to you. So I'm so sorry, Dexter. I feel so fucking low for asking and asking and finally when you might be willing I chicken the fuck out. Only I'm grossed out and I'm scared and I-"

She doesn't stop when I urgently shush her or when I tell her to be quiet, so I silence her with a quick, hard kiss on the lips. She doesn't expect it and it does the trick.

"Debra, we're not sleeping together," I whisper firmly. "You can just forget it. We're fucked-up enough without adding that shit to the list."

It's what I've been tiptoeing around telling her for quite a while and even implications of this fact have been hurtful to her, but now, as control threatens to spiral from her grasp, it brings utter relief to her terrified eyes.

"Really? We don't have to? Not just not tonight," she adds, embarrassed, "but maybe not ever?"

"Not if I can help it." I tuck her hair behind her ears to stop it falling across her face. "Sex isn't love, Deb."

"I think... I'm starting to see that," she admits. She still eyes me very nervously, as though she isn't sure whether I plan to jump her or yell at her. "I thought, when I realised I was in love with you, it must mean... But I guess I never, like, fantasised about shit with you, like you going down on me or whatever-"

"Ugh, stop," I interrupt, appalled. It's my turn to close my eyes and try to block the imagery. "Why did you have to say that?"

"I just mean it was never explicit, when I imagined us together," Deb covers hastily. "I never realised I could have one without the other."

I shake my head to clear the filthy suggestion out of my head. "Can we change the subject?"

She isn't convinced. She still looks wary. "You aren't... angry? This is such a dick move on my part."

"You're my sister. I'm not angry. I'm sure you'll piss me off again soon enough, but for now we're good," I say, and catch her when she throws herself tearfully at me for the tightest hug we've ever shared. It's reminiscent of the kissing – closeness, innocence, warmth, security – and I am struck again by how inconsequential our kiss was. Nothing has changed, except that the mountain of tension between us lately has totally evaporated.

"I didn't drop you?" she asks, voice tiny. I shake my head.

"Never."

"Are you mad I tried to kill you?" she murmurs, troubled, into my neck.

"You weren't going to kill me. You're too soft," I reply, earning myself a retaliative pinch on the arm. I smile into her hair; and she's back. "I'm not mad. I'm..." I trail off, thinking. I'm... what? I actually don't know. I can claim nothing's changed and feel honest in that but at the same time I also acknowledge that something _is_ changed. Before giving my sister back to herself, before letting her kiss me, before deciding to be better, I was Dexter Morgan, heartless monster and killer of killers. It is our choices that define us, I have always agreed with this adage, and I can't help noticing that my choices have, if not changed _me_ , definitely changed my perspective on myself.

In my sister's eyes, hazel like mine, I see a Dexter I never thought to believe in before. He feels; he loves; he gives and takes; he needs and provides; he hurts, hopes, regrets and attempts to repair. For a minute I chose to be him and he hasn't gone away. Deb seems to like him. I cannot reconcile him at first with my current self-image of cold, emotionless psychopath and wonder what is happening. One needs to move aside. If I never change but he is me, has he been there all along?

"I'm... conflicted," I admit finally. "I'm feeling. I don't understand."

I feel Deb's mouth, pressed against my neck, soften into a small smile. "That just proves it. I was right."

"I'm pretty sure that was not the consensus we just came to."

"No," Deb whispers adamantly, pulling away to look at me, "I mean-"

A sudden flash of light outside grabs our attention. We both look over, squinting into the dark outside, but the light has already gone, and where its source must have been stands an indistinct human figure. My first thought, stupidly, is that it's our dad; Deb reacts as though it is, and springs back from me like I've shocked her. For a second we stare at the faceless figure and whoever it is stares back at us. It's impossible to make out any details at all, but it's clear that there is someone standing on Deb's back patio. No one moves.

"Oh, fuck," Deb breathes finally, and the suspension of time snaps. I am immediately a predator. I lurch forward, pushing her leg out of my way and grabbing for the knife on the floor. I don't know where she kicked it but I'm lucky; I take an educated guess and my hand closes on it on first reach. I start for the door. The person outside crouches and seems to be collecting something.

"Stay in here," I order, working the door's locks hurriedly. Nothing gives. I growl, frustrated, as darkness takes hold and presses on my consciousness to get out there and catch this fucker who has come so close to my family. Deb is already up and clambers over the coffee table. She shoulders me aside and flicks the locks with the expertise to be expected of someone who lives here. I press my hand against the glass and pull to open it.

"Like fuck," she disagrees, and shoots past me through the opening before it is wide enough to admit me. I am close on her heels, trying to overtake her. I am armed and she is not. The stranger, laden now with a bag slung from the shoulder, is upright again and running in the opposite direction. He, or she, I can't tell in the dark, leaps from the edge of the landing onto the sand and peels off back towards the road. We follow suit, twenty metres behind. Deb calls, "Hey! Hold it, cocksucker!" It goes unheeded.

We almost never run together or need to run for our lives at the same time, but it turns out that Debra is faster than me. While I keep an even distance no matter how hard I run, she gains quickly on the figure as we near the road. The stranger runs for a distant car – its lights flicker as the remote central locking is activated – and upon reaching it throws open the door and jumps in. In seconds the car has started and takes off. I slow, recognising temporary defeat, but Deb gives chase until the car skids around the next corner and disappears.

The dark inside me is furious. The stranger got away. The stranger came way too close to what is mine and even without knowing who it was I am certain of the threat he or she represented to those I love. That makes the stranger mine to dismember and punish. Was it the same person as the one I thought I saw last night while I waited for Deb to come home? I feel my self-control slide away from me and I know I want to kill this person. The urge to have my way is overwhelming and I feel it close in on me, a dense black cloud separating me from the rest of humanity and from all distracting sensory information. I still have enemies. Really, it could have been one of only three people. I could go right now; kill all three in one night, all three just to be sure, slash their throats and get the hell out before the messy, evidence-laden crime scenes can be reported. I've got no plan-

"-but if you're quick you can make a run for it," Brian whispers from behind me, his chin resting on my shoulder. I frown. It shouldn't be his chin; it should be someone else's. His doesn't fit the same. "Get in, get fucked-up, get out. We can do this. We can eliminate these assholes once and for all. You'll never need to worry about them coming after your people again. And we won't get caught. We'll disappear, go someplace they'll never look." He pauses. We are both staring at the same person as she makes her way back from the road. "Somewhere Debra will never think to look, so she, Harrison and Hannah can't overdose themselves on you. We can leave and keep them all safe forever." He pats my arm. "This will just keep happening if you stay and keep playing by Harry's rules. There will always be another threat." I hear his smirk when he adds, "So, what did you think of her?"

Brian is as charming and persuasive as a ghostly voice for my subconscious as he was in life. But his voice seems to decrease in volume and his presence seems less prominent the closer Deb gets to me. Her light pushes back my darkness. My head starts to clear and become less single-mindedly vengeful. I become aware of my surroundings again, the beach, the breeze, the gritty sand under my bare feet, the hilt of the knife in my still-throbbing hand... The _now_ comes back to me and I come back to it. The immense gravity that is specifically _Deb_ allows me to come back together and remind myself of who I am and who I am not.

"I'm not listening to you," I tell Brian irritably. "What do you know? You told me I would kill her. Said it was inevitable. And I _didn't_. I had the damn knife and she even asked me to and I _didn't_."

"Yet," Brian can't help reminding me playfully. His chin feels less firm on my shoulder. His voice is becoming softer. "Give it time, little brother. You can't help yourself. You're just a killer."

"I'm more than you think," I insist, wrenching childishly away. I turn to glare at him, but he's gone.

"Who the fuck are you talking to?" Deb asks tiredly as she reaches me. I spin back to her and find her within arm's reach. She's back; didn't we both say she would be, that she always comes back, that she can't ever _not_ come back to me? The dark urge to destroy is washed from me and I am me again. Wincing, she cradles an arm against her chest and reaches over shoulder with the other to tenderly touch her back. She loses interest in my one-sided conversation immediately and doesn't give me time to answer. "I can't fucking believe this. Motherfuckers just keep getting away from me today."

"Who was it?" I ask, looking back toward the house to check for any sign of movement there. If our hasty exit from the house and Deb's yelling has woken Hannah or Harrison, there is no indication. They do not come out and no lights come on.

"I didn't get a good look. It was definitely a guy. Short hair. Elway, maybe, or Clayton. I knew already it wasn't fucking Vogel, there's no way she's that fucking nimble." Deb exhales loudly, vexed. I know she's pissed she couldn't catch him. "Fuckers."

"We'll work out who it was and we'll catch him," I assure her, but I am alright now with this not happening straightaway. Despite all the excitement I am alright in general. Deb is here. Deb has me.

"We," Deb repeats. Her eyes widen with horror. "God, fuck, _we_. Dex, he fucking saw us!" She clamps a dismayed, alarmed hand over her mouth and continues talking through her fingers, voice muffled. "He saw us! Holy fuck, someone saw us, and that flash – that was a camera, wasn't it?! Oh, my God..."

I, for my part, am less worried about being caught kissing my sister by a night-time creep and his camera than I am about what that creep was actually doing here. Whoever it was, Elway, Clayton or even someone else I haven't considered, he wasn't here looking for what he saw. No one but Hannah actually suspects that the Morgans are hooking up in their spare time, so our visitor must have been here for another reason. To kill us? To sneak in and search the place? To plant false evidence? All the reasons _I_ would cite for stopping by at an enemy's house at 3am come to mind and I really can't think of any others.

"Could have been worse. If we'd listened to _your_ idea."

"Don't be a smart-ass, Dexter," Deb snaps at me. She's stressed out, I can see, and _so_ not in the mood for playfulness. Laboriously she lifts her arm and repositions it across her middle using the other hand to guide it. "Some fucking psycho is stalking us and taking photos of us and from the way he bolted I'm guessing he's not a friend looking for a chat." She shakes her head, indulging in her self-incited panic. "Some psycho stalker freak saw me kissing my brother and has goddamn _photographs_ to prove it. You just know we're going to log into Facebook tomorrow and find our fucking profiles spammed with that shit, don't you? God, how humiliating. Ugh, fuck." Groaning, she slaps her palm onto her forehead several times. "Who the hell was it? Elway? Has to have been, right? Or Clayton? Or some fucker working for Vogel. I want to go right now and burn his fucking house down before he can tell anyone."

"What's wrong with your arm?" I ask. She's still holding it stiffly across herself.

"Nothing, you fucking jerk-face, I'm-" Deb starts angrily, but interrupts herself abruptly. She pauses a long moment and withdraws something from her pocket. Startled, I recognise the torn-up, cut-up, scrunched-up photo of her I wrote my promise onto and which she made her own promise over. She looks at it and then puts it away again. When she continues speaking her voice is controlled and even. "I think I pulled my stitches."

"Seriously?" I'm amazed by the power of a promise. I shouldn't be. I think of the promise she made me and how it's sustained me all week. Still, for Deb to handle her own emotions so efficiently is quite incredible to see. I lean down and push the knife blade into the sand safely. "Debra Morgan, controlling herself and giving a straight answer when she's pissed? Did that really just happen?"

"Don't push your luck, Dexter."

"Here, let me look," I instruct, taking her shoulder authoritatively and turning her away from me. I'm reminded of earlier today but this time she doesn't fight me. I find my phone in my pocket and use its flashlight to illuminate things as she awkwardly, slowly, pulls her shirt up again. Annoyed with her slow progress with one arm out of action, I hand her the phone and dispassionately pull the clothing up to the back of her neck. Five minutes ago, removing this same shirt was making me sick. Now I barely notice, entirely comfortable with her. She seems the same. She holds the phone over her shoulder to help me see. The cottony pad over the deep wound in her shoulder is red with fresh blood and the medical tape has come loose from her skin. I lift it away and see that she has ripped two of the five stitches as she ran.

"Well, we won't be spending much time at work tomorrow," I tell her, repositioning the padding. I glance at my watch. "Today, I mean. We've already got to visit the bank, get your licence, buy this godforsaken dress, and now we've got to go back to the hospital as well. And you're going to suck it up and be nice," I threaten when she tries to protest, "or I really will tranquilise you. They don't need you awake to stitch you up, you know."

"Asshole," Deb mutters. "Don't forget the shoes."

"Shoes, right," I agree. I press the tape back onto her skin. It isn't as sticky as it ought to be but it'll hold.

"And I want new earrings, too."

"Whatever you want," I assure her, rolling the fabric back into place over her back, trying not to disturb the loose padding. Deb looks back at me over her shoulder, incredulous.

"Whatever _I_ want?" she repeats, amused. "Who is this new Dexter? What changed?"

Her last question hits me harder than she throws it. Change. My deepest fear. What has changed, indeed? Don't I never change? Isn't that the point, the essence of being me?

But isn't Deb also part of me? Isn't she changed? Hasn't she grown up and adapted and been destroyed and rebuilt a thousand times? If she is changed and she is part of me and she is still here, am I not also changed? Do I not change slightly every time she does so we can still fit together? I am selfish and I know I make her do the most adapting – I demand she fit around me rather than the other way around, and I tell her that if she loves me she will just accept me as I am – but whenever I have been threatened with her loss or departure from my life I have been forced to soften, compromise just a little, just enough to make her stay. When Brian kidnapped her she changed; I had to acknowledge my fondness for her and how my need to protect her outweighed my desire to be free to do what I do. In the aftermath I had to be gentle and patient with her. When Frank Lundy died in front of her she changed; I had to be strong for her. When she struggled to be taken seriously at work she needed me to bounce ideas off and to give her confidence. I am more adaptable than I realise. But capable of real _change_?

Did I not just choose to be different for her? Did I not just agree to something that serves _only_ her benefit and not mine? Did I not once choose her over my brother, even though Brian was the selfish choice I so desperately wanted to make? Did I not just give her back to herself to save her? Did I not just experience her so fully that for a few minutes I knew what it was like to be normal, good, just like her? Is that not _different_ from the old Dexter?

Is _different_ not _changed_?

Did I not, earlier tonight, _want_ to be changed, to be different, and then follow through and _be_ different? Did I not take a deep, hard look at what I am this past week and the reckless damage I have inflicted on the lives of those nearest me and _decide_ to change?

Is knowing yourself more deeply not changing?

Holy shit. I _have_ changed. I _am_ changing. Or maybe I'm the same on the inside as ever but just have never looked this hard before. Harry was wrong and Deb was right, I _feel_ and I experience and I love.

And love... my love for Deb never changes, or so I claim, but I suddenly see it in another light. I understand how wrong I was. Love is not what I keep telling her and telling Hannah, the whole and total acceptance of someone for everything they are. That's tolerance. I tolerate Hannah, I realise, when I accept all her flaws and faults, and she tolerates me when she accepts me for a serial killer with a complicated and inexplicable relationship with a hostile sister. That's not love. Not real love. Love is challenging. Hard work. Worth it. Love is demanding. Love is expecting the best of someone and striving to give them the best in return. Love is fighting and screaming on the beach until you're heard because there's too much to give up on. It's asking for too much because you should be allowed to. It's fucking up, all the time, and still trying to do better next time even though it's hopeless, because you have to believe it can be fixed. It's compromising your own safety, beliefs and desires because the other needs you to. Love is being willing to change for someone else and expecting the same in return.

I laugh suddenly, struck with the obviousness of everything. I've tried so hard not to know it but now it's staring me in the face.

"What the fuck's funny?" Deb asks, annoyed. She turns and folds her arms.

"I'm not new," I say, smiling with disbelief. "I'm the same Dexter as you've always known, but I'm _changed_. Little by little, I've grown, just like everyone else does. And, Deb," I add, amazed it's taken so long to become clear but not threatened by the truth like I might have been yesterday or this morning or even half an hour ago, "I think I'm in love with you."


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. Or Facebook, despite throwing in a reference last chapter. Mark Zuckerberg owns that and probably a great deal else.

Deb stares at me like I've just announced I'm gay, or I'm marrying into an Amish colony, or I'm converting to Scientology and would she like to come sign up with me? In actual fact it's none of these things, but I've just told her I'm in love with her and that's about the same level of unexpected and crazy.

"No, you're not," she says finally, her tone one of irritation, like I am deliberately wasting her time. I shake my head, unable to wipe the stupid smile off my face. It's probably not funny to anyone else but the irony of all this is becoming steadily more evident to me.

"I am," I say, trying not to laugh and undermine my sincerity. "I must have always been."

"You said you weren't, before," she reminds me. In my state of exhaustion, coming down from the emotional intensity of the chase, the kiss, the heartbreak, the fighting, all the shit of the past weeks, her words are just too funny. I crack up.

"I know." I cover my mouth, trying to keep the stupid giggles in, but they won't stay inside. "Twenty-five hours ago I told you it was all in your head and there was nothing there. I was wrong, I guess. I'm..." It's too ridiculous, too funny. "I'm in love with you."

"Why are you laughing?" Deb demands. I only laugh harder.

"Because... we're so fucking hopeless," I manage, taking a step back and tripping on the knife I sunk into the sand. I stumble to my knees and continue to laugh. "I've been in love with _my sister_ my whole life and didn't even _notice_ for thirty-four years. Like, that wasn't obvious? And you," I add, pointing up at her, "you put the idea in my head in the first place. Who knew... when you told me... that eight months later I'd be saying the same thing back? That I'm in love with _you_."

Deb kicks sand at me and I sputter as grains go inside my mouth, but I can't control my hysterics.

"Don't make fun of me, fuckhole," she snaps. I insist I'm not but my laughter doesn't help my case. She glares at me. "You're being an idiot. You're not making any sense."

"That's just it," I tell her through gaps in my laughs. "It makes no sense. That's why it makes _perfect_ sense."

"You're an idiot," Deb confirms in an irritable mutter. Her arms are still tightly folded and she looks away to glare back along the road. Hurt. I struggle to regain some sort of control.

"Deb, look at me," I say, breaths of laughter still seizing me every few words. She ignores me except to narrow her eyes even further. "Listen, then. I'm not... I'm not making fun of you. I don't even know why I'm laughing. It's just all so utterly ridiculous, so damn pathetic, that if I didn't laugh I'd have to cry, and I'm so sick of crying about it."

She finally looks back at me.

"You just shouldn't say shit like that, unless you're sure you mean it," she says flatly. Her tone dampens my mirth and I manage to speak with some level of seriousness.

"It explains everything," I say. "Why I know you better than anyone, anything. Why you can talk me out from dark, devastating places but no one else can. Why I hurt when you hurt. Why you can hurt me at all. Why I'm only really living when you're around and why, even though our time together is more often bad times than good times, this is still so much better than the dullness that settles over everything when you go away. Why I feel _better_ with you than with anyone else. Why I keep coming back to you, even though I know I'm no good for you, why I can't stay away. Why I _need_ you."

"Why you said all that stuff outside the bathroom," Deb offers uncertainly. "Why you let me kiss you, even though you didn't want me to?"

"Exactly." I shake my head again. It's stupid how obvious it is. "It was always you. Everyone else has been a stand-in for you, an aspect of you or your exact opposite so I wouldn't need to admit I was in love with you, with what you are, because I knew I could never actually _be_ you or _be with_ you... But even that wasn't true, because I _am_ you and _you're_ me, we're two pieces of one thing."

"One very broken, fucked-up thing." Deb drops her arms. "My psych last year made me see the same thing about my relationships and you. But this is freaking crazy, Dexter. We can't _both_ be in love. That would be..." She struggles. "That would be too fucking convenient, that's what."

"It's not that convenient. But it's true."

"Then why didn't we want to sleep together tonight?" Deb quips, still hung up on this detail, apparently.

"Because sex is possession and you're already mine and I'm already yours," I realise. There's nothing more for us to achieve. "I've never needed to own you because I already do; maybe you didn't want more until you thought I was slipping away."

She reflects a long time on this suggestion, eyes deep. "Maybe." I can see that it makes sense to her, fits with what was happening between us at the time. She was my boss and she was struggling with the demands of the job and I was much too focussed on a game of catch and kill with two religious idealist murderers, only one of which actually existed, and the chasm of understanding that has always been present between us was wider than ever before. I was too deep in my hunt to be worried, convinced as I was back then that my sister was a given and she could never leave me and that there'd always be time to repair things later, but Deb needed me and I wasn't available. Even since that time, whenever things are good between us, and she's comfortable with the idea that I am hers, the sexual stuff isn't there. It comes up when Deb fears losing me, when I am being someone she doesn't like and she wants _her_ Dexter back, when things fall through her fingers and she can't get a grip and she reaches out to me, but she knows I can't be relied upon to stay so she feels driven to find some way of keeping me.

As with everything else that has gone wrong between us lately, this, too, is my own fault.

"You have _always_ been the other half of me, the one thing I can't live without," I tell her. "You've _always_ been the person I wished I was. You _always_ do what I wish I knew to do. I've _always_ felt inadequate around you and tried to be, or at least seem like, the kind of person you would want around. You've always been there for me to measure myself against. You've always demanded more of me than I thought I could be and you were right every time because you make me want to try. You stand up to me, you put me in my place, you make me look at myself, you make me make decisions I don't want to make that force me to change, you piss me off so bad sometimes-"

"And you still haven't killed me, you _must_ fucking love me," Deb comments sardonically.

"-and I still don't ever _want_ to kill you because then I'd lose the best thing I have. When you walked into the church, and everything changed, I remember I thought it was like the world was ending, like Travis kept saying. You were _the very worst_ person who could have interrupted. Anyone else, literally anyone else bar my kids, and I would have killed them, to save myself, but you... I screwed up so bad, Deb – I knew I should just let you have me, let you throw me in prison – but I saw this glimpse of life without you, a future where you had a brother on death row you hated too much to visit, and I was selfish and instead I manipulated you into helping me burn down the church. So I could keep you. So I could keep trying to fix what I'd just done to you. Because if I just loved you, I could have let you go, for your own good, like I should have, like I've done at some point with everyone else I ever loved – Rita, her kids, Lumen." Brian. Hannah. "But I don't just love you. I love you too damn much. You're my life. You're my conscience. You're my equal."

As I have been talking, Deb has come closer, ever wary and not sure whether to believe me. When she is right before me she, too, drops to her knees and looks me straight in the eyes. She is the only person who will challenge me, equal me, rival me. Once, she was the only person in the world who loved me, and even now, she's the only person who _knows_ me. She is the only one who will make me apologise for what I am. She is the only one who can hurt me. She's the only person who can break me, and she'll be the only one strong enough to survive me.

"You're mine," I say finally. The words fill the air between us for a very long moment. The words fill _me_. I feel... everything, once again. It's a lot. It's more than I am used to handling. Before, when we were kissing, I had an outlet – her – somewhere for the feelings to go. Now, they're stuck inside me. I feel unstable, like I could explode and make a mess of blood and bone fragments all over the beach and Debra. I'm sure that's physically impossible but it doesn't feel like it.

The air is still heavy with my words. No, it's heavy with more than just words. The sexual tension is back – my words have scared Deb, made her afraid to dare to believe me. When she's scared of losing me she wants me more. Her hand comes to lie lightly across my breastbone and her soulful eyes flicker down to my mouth.

"God, Dexter," she breathes. "Is it wrong that I'm more attracted to you right now than I was when we were undressing each other? Is it too late to change my mind?"

That starts me laughing again – some wall inside me breaks – and I lightly push her away. "You _are_ an erratic asshole."

"Like _you_ can talk," she debates, her shoulder rolling with my push. Never subtle, she shoves me back much harder than I pushed her. "You, who was all like, 'You're imaging things, Deb; there's nothing between us, Deb; you're a total fuck-up, Deb,' and then the next fucking day, 'Actually, I'm fucking in love with you, Deb'." She snorts derisively. "Or you tonight, going, 'I can't do this, I don't want to touch you, alright, ten seconds then', and then making out for five fucking minutes and not even being the one to stop it." She shoves me again, hard enough to knock me over, and I push myself back up from the sand onto my knees again, but I'm laughing so hard I barely notice. "You fucking liked it."

"Yeah, so?" I demand unapologetically between fits of laughter. Control starts to race away from me in all directions. "So I enjoyed it. Didn't you?"

"Well, yeah, until I freaked," Deb admits, trying to remain serious, but my hysterics are starting to affect her and the edges of her mouth twitch. She fights it. "Stop laughing, you'll wake them up."

"I can't stop," though I don't know why. Everything about my life is unreasonably hilarious. "Don't want to wake up my... my kid who draws pictures of gravestones in his schoolbooks... or my girlfriend, who p-poisons people. Killed _both_ of her husbands!" I snigger wheezily. My head drops forward onto my chest as I try to control my body's response to all this joviality. My heart races. "Probably going to try me next!"

Deb shakes her head at me, giving up her fight against her smile. "That's so not funny, Dex."

"I know," I wheeze. But it is, it's so damn funny. "It would suck so much if she did. What the fuck is with my life, Deb? Listen, listen," I insist, grabbing her shoulders as if she were going anywhere, "so I'm a bloody serial killer, with another killer for a girlfriend... and I've been planning some fantasy future in another country where she'll undoubtedly kill me someday... and acting like I think it can actually work, when shit, we all know it's a goddamn lie." I am nearly howling with laughter, barely managing to contain the volume of my outburst. "And I work for the cops _and_ I'm a serial killer, how insane is that? How the hell is it that I've never been caught?! And it was Dad's idea! It's so... ridiculous. And you – you're a _detective_ , you lived with me most of your life... You never... noticed... Ow," I gasp, clutching my stomach as the convulsions of laughter take their toll on my bruised and already tense core. I'm nearly sobbing with laughter. "He told me I was never allowed... to tell you. But he didn't get it, he didn't know... what he did... when he brought me home. He didn't know what I really was. He... He didn't know he was giving you to me and me to you and we'd... we... we'd grow up so damn _reliant_ on each other and we'd be _in love_ with each other. That I'd... want to be you, and you'd want... I don't know, what the hell _do_ you want? To be me, so you'd... get Dad's attention? He was a godawful father! Jesus," I gasp, wiping stinging tears of laughter from my eyes. I feel like all that is _me_ is slipping away with my self-control and everything I ever could have and should have felt is rushing in to replace it all. "We got so ripped off. But fucking Vogel offed him before... before he... could fix it with us, and now I've got to k-kill her so _you_ don't try it yourself. You! Like I should ever... have had to worry... But I do, 'cause I wrecked every... everything... I'm so... poisonous... to you. I should leave you... the hell... alone... but I can't. It's all so damn _stupid_."

"You're stupid," Deb retorts, but by now laughter is bubbling from her as well. It's been too long since I heard her laugh, properly laugh, and that should be sad but I simply find that funny as well. I'm clearly way overtired, drunk on exhaustion and high on fluctuating emotions. "Actually," she giggles, "I think you're having a fucking breakdown, bro."

" _You_ had a breakdown. This... is different. I think... it's a panic attack," I answer, tears running down my face too fast for my shaking hands to wipe them all away. "I think... it's just too much... for me to feel... at once." I gasp for air but I am now laughing so hard that I struggle to draw breath. "Deb... I think... I'm dying..."

Deb's giggles give way to a burst of hysterical laughter and she collapses forward, holding onto my shoulders for support. I gasp quick, sharp, shallow breaths between laughs that don't help at all.

"Fuck, that's not even funny," she manages. "You sound like... like you're... having a heart attack or something. Are you?"

"I don't... I... I don't... know."

"That would be... so poetic. Fucking Grinch you are, dying of a... of a _heart_ attack. Like you even... had one... before tonight." Deb presses her face into my chest, laughing uncontrollably, hanging from my shoulders by her long arms. I keep an arm loosely around her neck to keep me upright if I lose consciousness and fall over. I still can't get a decent breath. "You loved me your whole life and waited... thirty-four years... to fucking realise? Dad taught you all these... fucking... ninja skills... for killing bad motherfuckers and... and cleaning it all up and shit, but he never... Fuck, he got so caught up in turning you into a serial killer that he forgot there was a _person_ in there to nurture, didn't he?"

"Deb..." I am still laughing with no end in sight and I still cannot draw a proper breath. I am surviving off wisps of air that come in when my diaphragm spasms and pulls on my lungs for inhalations that are forced straight back out for exhalations of laughter. I am beaten senseless with conflicting feelings, for our father, for Vogel, for Hannah, for myself, for Deb... It's all still pretty funny, not least that I am suffering a mild nervous breakdown – that shit is fucking _hilarious_ – but panic has also set in and I am pretty convinced now that if I am not yet experiencing a heart attack, the stress of all these emotions and the lack of oxygen might soon set one off. My pulse is erratic and speeding. My chest aches. My throat is tight. Everything, everything in my head and heart, washes over me over and over again, inescapable, unanswerable. "Deb..."

"What... what the fuck... do I tell people," Deb asks when she can get a breath herself, sitting up and looking at me with sparkling eyes, "when you fucking _die_ here, on the beach? Do I say... Do I say, he _laughed_ himself to death? That's so..." She dissolves into fresh laughter; she clutches me close and though I am laughing every bit as violently as she is, I feel myself start to slump in her arms. I am not getting enough oxygen, I can see stars that are not part of the northern hemisphere's skyline... Stars that _should_ be there start to blink out as my vision gets darker. Somehow this is still intensely funny and I still convulse with fits of laughter that I have not the strength to even produce. Harry's many mistakes, _my_ many mistakes, even Debra's mistakes, they all led us here to this outrageous moment in time. Over the sounds of my own dry wheezing and gasping I hear Deb finally finish her sentence, "... fucking... stupid..."

"Deb... Help..." I waste precious breath begging. My lungs burn like they did when she tried to strangle me, except this time I'm not at the mercy of my good-hearted sister and I have no assurance that it will end well, or that an action of _hers_ will make a difference. She, too, is lost to the comedy of the situation, and continues to laugh.

"Your breakdown is... so much more fun... than mine," she remarks. "Imagine... if our stalker... came back and found us... like this. Must think... fucking freak Morgans... Ha! Dex, you fucking loser," she comments gleefully, catching me when I am finally all out of air and my legs give out. I keep trying to say her name but no sound comes out of me. Panic has seized my chest and constricted my airway, paralysing my vocal cords. Deb locks an arm underneath mine and around my back to keep me upright and against her. She may see the terror in my eyes as I look up at her but the choking still sounds like laughter and the fitful muscle spasms look it, too. In actual fact I am going into respiratory arrest. And still the emotions buffet me. "You can't _die_."

To prove it, Deb leans down to me. Her mouth closes over mine. Our lips won't seal because it keeps getting broken by our laughter. Initially I fight it on impulse, recognising that if she is between me and my air I have zero chance of getting through this even if I do regain control of my respiratory system. She grabs the back of my head with her other hand and holds me still. I wait to die, in her arms, of laughter, the lamest way to go that there could be.

But I don't. Forcibly she exhales, warm air filling my mouth, my throat, my starving lungs... My convulsing muscles are pushing upwards, ejecting air that isn't there, but Deb's breath is stronger and my lungs inflate deliciously. She breaks away to inhale and my traitorous body keeps trying to exhale all she's given me as coughs of laughter. She's not put off or offended; she breathes into me again, and again, never a total lungful because she herself is still battling the laughing bug but enough, just enough. Control and presence come back to me. Slowly, my chest and stomach relax, though panicky chuckles keep bubbling up. Still Deb breathes life into me. The air she gives me is less oxygenated than the air around us, but it thrills me to be allowed it. It's from her, and she breathed it for me. It has all the same intimacy as the breaths of hers I stole when we kissed, and I am dizzily delighted to be granted my wish. I will get my chance to poison myself on her. I am living off her, feeding off her, in the most literal sense. I want it all. She can always do this. She can bring me back. She can fix me. And she does. My racing heart returns to a more normal, more even beat. My windpipe expands. My laughter all but dies. The panic recedes. The emotions remain.

I straighten, the strength to support my own weight returning to my bent legs. She breathes once more into me, an unnecessary breath that I should have taken for myself and not from her. I am too selfish in this moment to think on that. Closeness is addictive; I am high on my body's chemical responses to emotion and the rush of oxygen to my brain makes me giddy. I only want more of her, whatever she'll let me take and maybe a little more. When we kissed before I felt balanced and whole; I want that again, I want these emotions gone. I'm so sure she can do that, make them manageable again. I am feeling way too much and need someone to take them out on. Without thinking I push her back and down onto the sand, following immediately and pinning her down like prey.

"Oww," she complains, still laughing, when her wounded back knocks onto the ground, and she shifts to reduce the pressure on her shoulder. It doesn't distract her. She curls her hand around my wrist as I come down over her.

And it is when I am over her and looking into her trusting gaze that it occurs to me, that which I have always known, that which she keeps telling me – Deb loves me too much.

"Shit," I mutter dejectedly, the crazy whirlwind of emotions starting to crash down on me. The breaths, the kisses… I want them but they are hers. She was sustaining me, giving me what she should be keeping for herself, saving me when she should be letting me suffer, and now she is letting me hurt her to appease my own emotional struggles. She should have let me die, not brought me back to life. Even when she is saving my life I want more from her. Even when I know she herself was all out of magic just hours ago I want her to dig deep and find more for me. I want every breath she has, rather than just what I need to get back my control. And she gives it, willingly. She's too good for me. She's not the poison; I am.

I am so disappointed in myself, though I've not really done anything yet. I said I wanted to change, and I made a realisation that has changed the way I look at myself and will change how Deb looks at me, but the effect I can have on those I love when I am unbalanced remains unchanged. The change, the difference, will only be apparent when I _choose_ differently.

"Dexter," Deb says firmly, and without warning knocks my shaking arm swiftly out from under me. I fall forward and land awkwardly across and beside her. I get a mouthful of sand and she bursts out laughing again, rolling joyfully to face me. Playfully she kicks my leg off of hers. "Don't you dare start stressing. I've had enough of all that. I know you have, too."

"I can't stop feeling shit," I say, turning my head to look at her. "Stress, regret and self-loathing are in there, too." Deb laughs in my face at the sand on my lips and wet cheeks, then sobers. She lays a comforting arm over me and shifts to be able to be closer to me.

"Our whatever-this-is, it just is what it is. You don't need to feel bad for not _wanting_ sex out of me," she assures me, misinterpreting my reasons for backing off. "I was kidding before. Kind of." She thinks on it, laughing one more final giggle. "No, alright, not really, I meant it, but I don't mean it _now_. But I might later. I don't know. God, that doesn't even make sense. I mean…" She pauses to get her thoughts together. Finally she says bluntly, "You're in love with me. For right now, it's enough for me to know that. To know I'm good enough for someone, because I haven't felt _good enough_ for a fucking age, and that's all I've wanted in so long."

"It's crazy you think like that," I comment, "because from where I stand, I'm the one that's not good enough, and you're everything I could want to be." My trembling fingers find the ends of Deb's hair and automatically fidget with it. It distracts me from the pressure in my head, the tightness in my chest and the aching of my stomach. My whole body is quaking, an after-effect of my panic attack. I am much more aware of my physical and emotional distress than usual. I try to think of her, only her, and little by little, the particles of my scattered self start creeping back together. "I wish I _was_ you. But then you'd have to be me and I wouldn't want that for you."

"Yeah, I seem to have a hard enough time just being _me_ , and according to fucking Vogel I've got it easy compared with you," Deb agrees. The laughter over, sharing warmth on this cool sandy beach, she sounds sleepy. "But it's nice to know you wouldn't do a trade if a voodoo witch offered it. I don't want your body. It's old and slow."

"Fuck you, it is not," I argue lightly. "Old _er_. Slow _er_. That's all." We smirk at each other. Deb's eyes drift closed. I keep forgetting how exhausted she is; I keep forgetting how exhausted _I_ am. The feelings hammer at me but if I just focus on Deb I can deal with them. "What I am, what I've done… I _never_ want this for you." I want you to stay exactly as you are – perfect. "I never wanted anything of the past few years of trauma to happen to you. Like Dad, I just wanted you safe and happy." And near.

"Crap, imagine if Dad could see us now," Deb mentions dreamily. She definitely sounds tired. "You just know he'd blame all this on me. Everything was always my fucking fault."

I hug her a bit tighter. I disagree – I am sure if Harry is watching us right now he is shaking his head at me, not her, mistakenly thinking I am the stronger one who should know better – but I also understand where she is coming from. I'm sure from where she stood, our father's awkward and haphazard attempts to preserve her innocence and ignorance felt like constant reminders of her own perceived inadequacy.

"If Dad blamed you we could both have told him to go fuck himself," I say finally. "He loved us and he wanted better for us but he underestimated us. You are so much more than he ever knew, and I…"

I don't know how to finish that sentence. I barely know who or what I am anymore. I'm a creature that feels nothing who right now is feeling everything.

"Ah, Dexter," Deb murmurs contentedly, snuggling close. Her nose touches my cheek and I feel her delicate breaths on my skin. It's all the medicine I need. "You're right, we're fucking hopeless. Ours can't be the _most_ tragic love story ever told, surely?"

"Could have fooled me," I comment dourly, and I feel her smile.

We lie under the stars for a while in silence. I feel my sister's breaths deepen and I realise she's falling asleep. It's selfish but I don't want her asleep, not yet. Something is nagging at me and I need an answer before we pass out.

"Deb," I whisper, squeezing her gently and jostling her. "Deb, wake up."

She doesn't open her eyes but she frowns and mumbles, "What?"

"Did you mean what you said today to Dr Vogel? You said I would have been fine without her influence. Did you mean that you think… I could have turned out normal, eventually?"

I'm hesitant and too scared to be hopeful. Deb is dragged back to consciousness by my neediness. She opens her eyes.

"Do you remember my first day of school?" she asks quietly. I raise an eyebrow, surprised by this line of conversation. It seems off-topic. "Remember, Mom packed me my lunch and all my books all covered in contact into this big red Strawberry Shortcake schoolbag and she wanted to walk me to my classroom and I said-"

"'I'm in big school now, I don't need anyone to hold my hand'," I recall suddenly, of a little tiny Deb sitting staunchly in the backseat of the car, refusing to get out unless she was allowed to walk herself unattended into her new class. Doris Morgan was so heartbroken to have to miss this special moment with her daughter but in the end had to acquiesce and watch tearfully from the school gate as little pigtailed Debra followed me towards the school's main building without a backwards glance, brand new schoolbag perched cheerfully between her shoulders.

Deb nods once. "It was such a fucking lie. I was scared shitless. But I didn't want anyone to know, so I just went on into school with you, pretending to be brave, and then suddenly we were in the hallway with _so many_ other kids and they were all so much bigger than me. There was this really huge kid-"

"Brock O'Reilly," I remember. "Cocky, jumped-up little shit. He peaked early. Got to five-foot-two and stopped growing."

"Yeah, him. He walked in at the same time as us and he kind of sneered at us and said, 'Dexter, is that your _sister_?' I straightaway felt stupid for leaving Mom behind and I wondered if you would tell Dad if I ran back to her, because I didn't want him to think I was a scaredy-cat. I felt so goddamn small and pathetic and I just froze and you went ahead. Then the door closed behind us and blocked Mom out, and you just said 'Yes' and came back and grabbed my hand and walked me to my classroom."

"Dad took me aside that morning, before he left for work," I admit now. The reminiscing is calming; I feel some of the emotions that swirl through me begin to settle. "He said things would change for me now that I had my little sister at school and I would need to keep an eye out for you. You'd been telling everyone you would be walking to the class by yourself and I was to make sure you got there; I wasn't allowed to just walk off and leave you once we got inside. He made me promise."

"Ha, the truth comes out thirty fucking years later," Deb says softly, smiling. "But that's not why you did it. You walked me to Miss Hallowell's class because you're my big brother."

"Well, yeah. It was my job."

"Exactly." Deb closes her eyes again. "Yes, Dexter, of course the answer's yes; whatever the fuck Dad said, whatever bullshit Vogel pulled over his eyes and yours about psychopaths and being predisposed and pre-fucking-destined to do all kinds of fucked-up shit, I just never bought it. It doesn't match the brother I know. You didn't need a _Code_ to tell you to protect your sister then, you didn't need it today when you stormed Vogel's house looking for me and you don't need it now. Yeah, you fuck things up for me and yourself and everyone else in your life, but do I think you'd be like that if Vogel hadn't interfered and convinced Dad to follow the path he took with you? No, not really. You could have been like me. You could have been fixed, I know it. Dad worked that out at the end; I just wish he didn't give up on you so early. Things would have been different. Well," she amends sleepily, "I think so, anyway."

"I wasn't a normal kid, Deb," I remind her. "You must remember that."

"I remember a dorky brother who always said sorry when he did something wrong and was always willing to negotiate to get back into my good books. So you were missing a few pages out of your social skills manual. So was I, but Dad didn't fucking bother to notice that and find an immoral hobby to teach to me."

"It was a bit more than just social skills making us different."

"You were traumatised. You needed help, not channelling. We found out later you saw some awful, awful things before Dad brought you home, and alright, that shit leaves scars and it took three decades to even start to break those walls down, and maybe after all this time and all you've done there's some stuff that can't be undone and maybe it's too late to fix everything now, but behind those walls… Under that scar…" Deb kisses my cheek with the delicacy of a butterfly landing. "I know there's someone not unlike me. My brother. I know him, even if they didn't, even if you don't."

"What about my _urges_?" I ask timidly, hoping against hope that she'll have an answer for this, too. She does. She opens one eye just a crack.

"Since when are they unique to you?"

I'm dozily astounded by her logic. The idea that I _could have been just like Debra_ is big enough that it slows the sickening storm of emotions and reduces them to a dull background droning. My mind is quiet enough to take on this revelation and possibility, but I am much too tired to start to dissect it. I decide to leave it in there to deal with later.

"Did you mean what _you_ said?" Deb whispers now, her voice a fatigued slur. "'Bout Hannah. How it's all gonna fall to shit?"

"Pretty much," I admit. Distantly I feel a sense of loss and regret about this realisation but I'm too emotionally exhausted to allow myself to really experience it right now. "I've been living in a dream. Today has been a rude awakening."

"What're you gonna do?"

"Don't know. I'll work it out tomorrow."

"Can we kill her?"

I laugh once, softly, and stop immediately, the memory of nearly laughing myself to unconsciousness fresh in my mind. "Let's explore the alternatives first."

"But... you're still going to Argentina?"

I kiss Deb's nose and watch as she smiles faintly. "Cuba. And no. Staying right here with you."

We've both heard everything we need to hear from the other. As Deb starts to doze off again I shake her and haul myself and her to our feet. She grumbles incoherently about being made to move when she was apparently already comfortable. I start toward the house but I pause and look back when I find myself walking alone. She's standing there where I left her, rubbing sand out of her eyes. Struck by a sense of déjà vu I return to her, take her hand and lead her. Sometimes, despite what someone might claim, a hand does need to be held.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. Or Weet-bix. Or Tumblr. On that note, what exactly is the purpose of Tumblr? If I owned it, the first thing I would do would be to deduce the answer to this question.
> 
> Author's notes: Music influences my writing. In writing this fanfiction I listened to a lot of Matchbox Twenty, in particular Long Day, If You're Gone and Girl Like That. That's probably the main influence for this chapter. Deb's soundtrack for falling for/pursuing Dex in earlier chapters includes Treacherous by Taylor Swift and E.T. by Katy Perry. But another song for chapter 18 was Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of by U2; chapter 19 was heavy, a lot of Evanescence and early Alanis Morissette (as heavy as I go) was thrashed in the making of this chapter, but the introspective and soul-searching elements would be best read to Breathe No More by Evanescence and Iris by Goo Goo Dolls; while chapter 20 would be The Only One by Hot Chelle Rae.

I slowly drift up from a sleep that is black and complete. I know innately that I haven't slept long enough so I fight the sensation of waking; I keep my eyes tightly shut and force myself to stay under. In my dreamless slumber I am numb and ignorant and I like that. I'm used to that. But the sense of presence, the awareness of someone nearing, nags at the edge of consciousness, and with extreme reluctance I follow that pull into the waking world.

I don't want to open my eyes to the brightness of the morning so I instead take stock of what I can notice without looking. I am lying on my stomach with my neck bent at a slightly awkward angle. There is a conspicuous but comforting weight on top of me. I don't remember her collapsing on top of me and falling asleep but I know intrinsically that it's Deb. I don't recall much from last night at this hazy point between sleep and waking. I _feel_ different. I feel _stuff_. I'm not sure how to explain how. All I know is we had a fucking heavy day that I don't want to think too much upon but she is here with me right now and we are together and therefore both okay.

Her arm is slung over me and hangs limply over the side of the couch. Her hair blankets my shoulder and arm. Her face is nestled closely into the gap between my shoulder blades. I feel her exhalations drift like a night breeze across my skin. I am not wearing a shirt. My sister is, and it's soft against my bare back as she breathes in and out. I listen to that sound and find myself slipping back under. That sense of being approached and watched pesters me but Debra is the strongest force in my life and I succumb to her instead.

My peace is abruptly broken by a sudden increase to the weight on top of me. My eyes snap open and my heart races in preparation for whatever is happening. Deb is startled awake, too, and tries to sit up, but her hair is caught under my arm, wrenching her back down with a disorientated noise. The new weight shifts as Harrison scrambles up and climbs on top of us. He lies down hurriedly on Deb's back and assumes a rigid, 'sleeping' pose as though he has been there the whole time. He closes his eyes tightly.

"'arrison?" Deb mutters thickly, trying to look back at him. Squashed beneath them both, I fight the crick in my neck to do the same. Reluctant to admit to his own failure, Harrison opens one worried eye.

"Good morning, Aunt Deb," he replies in a dejected whisper. "I didn't mean to wake you up."

Deb sighs and drops her head back down. I exhale heavily, releasing the tension that built so quickly at the threat of danger. But there's no danger. There's just my little boy, wanting to be near us. No doubt it's him I've felt staring at me for the last minute, watching his dad and aunt sleep soundly and closely and wanting to be part of it. Clearly he is related to Deb and me because subtlety is not his strong point.

"Careful of Aunt Deb," I warn gently. "She has sores on her back."

"Oh. Sorry, Aunt Deb." Harrison wriggles from Deb's back and onto mine beside her. Her arm lifts away from me to loop around him instead.

"All good, baby," she whispers sleepily. My son is mildly offended.

"I'm not a _baby_." But he accepts the hug graciously.

"How are you feeling today, little buddy?" I ask. He slept so much of yesterday and judging by the brightness of the room he's had quite a sleep-in by his standards.

"Good," he says cheerfully. "Can I go to school today, Daddy? I hope Alex's mom let him leave his show and tell on the teacher's desk so I can still see it. Alex has the best show and tells," he adds in an aside to Deb. She makes a vaguely questioning noise to let him know she's listening. "One time, he brought in a _rocket_. I might make a rocket today in craft time."

"I'd love to see that," I tell him, quietly. We are all speaking very softly, even Harrison, as though we are all aware that this moment together is precious and easily broken, and no one wants to risk being too noisy in case that ends it. "Do you think you could make one for Cody? Astor's going to get so many presents this weekend and Cody might feel better if he gets a rocket."

"I'll make him a green one," Harrison agrees. I feel him move slightly as he turns his head and shoulders to address Deb. "Do you think Cody likes green, Aunt Deb?"

My sister is failing miserably at waking up. She mumbles into my skin, "Hmm? Uh, yeah. Green."

"Did you drink beers for dinner, Aunt Deb?" Harrison asks compassionately, without judgement. I snort with amusement as Deb groans and finally starts fighting off sleep for her nephew's benefit.

"No, Aunt Deb just stayed up too late," she mutters. "She missed her bedtime."

"And you forgot to go to your own bed," Harrison notes. I feel Deb's face move against my skin as she cringes. "Sometimes I do that if I stay up for too long. Like if I'm playing with my toys or watching a movie."

"You got it, buddy," Deb murmurs. She lifts her head again, slowly this time, and I move my arm to release the ends of her hair. Once her hair is all free she lies back down in a more comfortable position. "Our movie went way too late."

"What kind of movie?"

"A long, scary one," Deb responds. "Lots of surprising bits."

"Oh. I don't like those ones. Daddy and Jamie don't let me watch them."

"No. That's good. But sometimes they have alright endings."

I smile into the cushion. I don't remember everything from yesterday – it's a conscious decision at this point, because I know remembering will ruin this moment – but I'm glad to have it confirmed that it all ended well.

"Did you sleep well, Harrison?" I ask. "Did you get sick or wake up in the night time?"

"No, I'm okay," my son answers brightly. "I still want to go to school today and I can still go to Orlando tomorrow. Right?" he checks quickly with Deb. She shifts to kiss his hair.

"If you're really all better," she agrees softly. "Otherwise we can wait a couple more days."

"No, I'm all better," Harrison insists staunchly. "We can go tomorrow. Please?"

We agree and Harrison snuggles into us. His foot slips down beside my hip and I reach down to hold it, enjoying the intimacy of this brief moment. My family, the people who make me better, who make the emotional barrage of being human not only manageable but worthwhile, the two of them as close to me as I can get them. Physically, a lot of me aches with half-remembered pain from injuries sustained yesterday; I hardly notice. Mostly I am just aware of every point of my skin that touches one of the other Morgans. That, and the swelling feeling in my chest, the feeling of loving two people almost more than it is possible to love. I only ever feel like this around them. I only _will_ ever feel like this for them.

Harrison takes to stroking my arm but soon stops. "Daddy, what happened to you?"

My eyes have drifted back closed so I open them to look where his finger is touching. My arm is smeared with dried blood and the thin line where Deb cut me is a mangled scab, disturbed in its healing process by her scratching me. Granules of sand are set into the congealed blood. But it's nothing. We've done much worse to each other on the inside and if _that_ could be healed, and in this gorgeous sunlit moment it feels like it has been, a tiny scratch is nothing to be concerned with. A battle scar. Proof I confronted Deb's darkness and mine, and won her back.

"I just need to be more careful with scissors," I say. But my son is growing up and is not always totally appeased by my offhand explanations for strange occurrences. He sits up and turns his attention to Deb. He touches her back gingerly where he can see the scrunched sterile padding protruding under her clothing.

"And what happened to you, Aunt Deb?" he asks. I feel the sweetness slipping away as Harrison drags us back into reality. Shit, I hate reality. "Did you get hurt?"

"Bad guys," she explains. "But I'm alright. Daddy looked after me, and so did the doctors."

"Because it's Daddy's job to look after you," Harrison recalls, contented by her words instead of mine, "and me." Surprising me, he throws himself against me and stretches to kiss my face. He whispers in my ear, "Love you, Daddy." Can't we three stay like this for always?

"Love you," I whisper back. Harrison sits up and I try not to wince as he kneels in the centre of my back, squashing all the air uncomfortably out of me and putting pressure on my very tender sternum. I recall being struck there yesterday by Oliver Saxon right before Deb came and saved my ass.

"Would you like some juice, Aunt Deb? Daddy?"

"Definitely," I breathe, ready for him to hop off, and inhale deeply when he rolls off me and bolts to the kitchen. Deb lifts herself slightly so I, too, can roll over. I settle on my back and she lies back down beside me. Her head fits perfectly on my shoulder.

"Juice. How old does he need to be to learn how to make coffee?" Deb mumbles into my neck. "Surely that can't be far away."

"At least eight, I think," I respond, blinking hard and trying to convince my eyes that they need to stay open. They're so tired, like the rest of me. I could definitely sleep another ten hours quite happily. Deb groans again and rubs her face with her hand.

"My head hurts," she complains. She shifts her hand to her temple, her ear, her neck. "There's fucking sand in my ears. And my hair..." Unwillingly she starts to get up; her first attempt fails and I have to push her into an upright position. I sit up beside her and let my forehead fall forward onto her shoulder, just an extra second of rest before facing the world. She lets me, works around me, running her fingers through her long hair to clear the sand out. "I only fucking washed it yesterday. Is this _glass_?" She disentangles her fingers from a knot and brings a tiny, sparkling sliver of matter out for us both to view. I observe it with distaste. I thought I'd gotten all of that shit out at Vogel's, but I am also not surprised. The cabinet shattered right beside us and Deb took the brunt of it. An analysis of Deb's hair, and even mine, would probably still find microscopic fragments of the cabinet in there.

In the kitchen Harrison is noisily arranging cups on the bench top and complaining about the tightness of the juice bottle lid. I wait for the bang, splash and glugging noises that signal he's dropped the bottle and it's pouring out all over the floor.

"What are you going to do about Hannah?" Deb asks me now, softly. Hannah. Oh. Words, realities and visions from last night suddenly return to me. The feelings come back, too, and I battle to keep them down at a level I can manage. They are stronger than I am used to and threaten to drown me, but Deb is near; I can handle it. I swallow and let the emotions rise and then ebb back to quiet. I remind myself to be logical. Focus. Deb's asking about Hannah. I immediately want to not think about it, but I remember now that I told Deb I'd decide tomorrow, and it's tomorrow. I blink and look down her arm, the only thing I can see from my vantage point.

"It's not fair to tell someone you love them and you want a life with them and then change your mind," I say, very quietly. "It's definitely not fair of me to tell her I'm in love with you and not her. It's not her fault she's not... you. But I can't go with her."

"So tell her that?"

"And wake up tomorrow to find you and Harrison dead in your sleep? No thanks." I love Hannah but I don't doubt the repercussions of scorning her.

"We could kill her."

I reluctantly sit up straight and look into my sister's eyes. For the tiniest of instants I see someone else in her eyes, someone I never saw in them before – Brian. I blink and he's gone. I search, I frown and look closely, but it's only Deb. Always Deb.

"Or not. She hasn't done anything wrong yet." I ignore Deb's snort of disbelief. I keep my voice low. "You know what I mean. I think we should pretend like nothing's changed. Tomorrow you take Harrison and go to Orlando. I'll stay behind and get Hannah ready to leave. I'll put her on a plane and send her away and she'll think I'm following later... and then I just won't." I consider this and see that Deb is doing the same. Amongst all the other emotions swaying within me I feel only mild regret this morning about the prospect of saying goodbye to Hannah forever. It would be for the best of everyone. I would keep my life here in Miami with my family. Hannah would be safe, free and, at first, happy, and in the long run she'd be better off because I was sure to destroy her eventually like I do to everyone else that gets too close. Or I'd have pissed her off one day and she'd have poisoned me. It was never going to end well. "She's a survivor. She'll handle the disappointment. She'll be mad when she realises I'm not coming but she'll have trouble getting back into the States and she'd pick survival over revenge." Unless she sees them as the same thing, which will happen if she cottons on that I am leaving her. "She _can't_ know."

Debra doesn't argue. She understands the stakes. Hannah has been my lover but in my sister's eyes she has always been a threat to our lives and our family, and while I have been dreaming of a fantasy future with Hannah I have all along respected that Deb's view is also totally correct – Hannah is dangerous and must be treated with extreme caution. So we must tread softly and measure our words. Hannah cannot know. It's for her own best interests but she won't see it that way so she can't be told.

The bottle crashes to the floor and the thirsty glugging begins as the liquid gushes out and the air floods in to fill the void. Deb starts to get up but I still her with a hand on her shoulder.

"I'll get it," I say tiredly. It's my fault. I knew it was coming and did nothing to stop it. This seems to be my pattern when it comes to disasters in my life. I stiffly get to my feet. My beating from Saxon is fully apparent to me, and I am quite sure I'd feel better this morning if I'd slept in a bed instead of on a sofa with another adult on top of me. I glance, and then second-glance, at my watch as I head to the kitchen. "Are you working today?"

"Of course. You think a psychotic break is enough to keep me home with your fucking sweetheart?"

"Then don't wash your hair, we've got to go."

Deb stretches to be able to fit her hand into her jeans pocket. She checks the time on her phone and her eyes widen. "Fuck, we're going to be late." She hurriedly jumps up, already dialling, and runs to her room. After a short phone conversation I hear her shower start.

Harrison apologises profusely as I collect the near-empty juice bottle from the kitchen floor. I cannot be annoyed with him. It's hardly his fault. He's four. I should have been pouring my own juice. I give him a tea towel and we start mopping up the mess. Once the majority is soaked up I go to the spare room to enlist Hannah's help.

I find pretty, blonde Hannah McKay sitting in the centre of the bed, fully dressed and ready for the day. She looks at me with an unreadable expression. I look back at her, probably the same way.

"Were you telling me the truth?" she asks quietly. "Is everything better this morning?"

I smile, a genuine one. "Yes, everything is so much better. We're all going to be okay. Yesterday was insane but it's over now and it's all going to be alright."

"Are _we_ alright, too?" Hannah checks. Her expression remains guarded but I catch the hint of unspeakable terror undermining her careful tone. When did she grow to love me, need me, want me, this badly? Was it while I let go of my love for her this past week she's been grabbing it out of the air and swallowing it? While mine has decreased hers has grown.

"We're perfect," I say, and I feel like that's the truth. We're going to be fine because I see now that we're not going to be together. We're both going to be happy because we're going to be realists and we're going to get out of this before it gets messy. Something had to give, and if we let this go, we can have everything else. "From my end, anyway. How does it look from yours?"

"It looks... like our relationship gained a third person," Hannah says carefully, "but I thought about it all night, and realised it might _look_ like that, but that isn't the case. She was always part of it. She's why we met, why you pursued me in the first place, why you are who you are... And I realise that if I want you I have to take your sister as part of that package, there's no way around her. You don't function when you're at odds with her. She's part of the Dexter I love. Your relationship is..." She shakes her head, lost for words. "It's the strangest thing I've ever seen. I don't _like_ it, but I love you, so I can live with that." She offers me a faint smile. "Did you two get things straight?"

"We did. We talked for hours, and a lot of unexpected shit came up for us both... but it was... cleansing... to get some of those feelings out in the open," I confess. I neglect to mention what those feelings were. Hannah doesn't ask. Her open, interested expression indicates that she hasn't made the connection between what I'm saying and some of her past suspicions. Some part of me is now thinking that things would have been easier if she'd just walked out on me last night when I suggested it, but I don't wish it. I still love her, I only see now that it's a small, futureless love that pales in comparison with the other loves in my life. Everyone else I love, I love more than her. She has loved me so deeply – she deserves better than me. And I will give her that freedom. I will set her free from me. "I feel... like I know who I am. Or that I know myself better today. I feel like I understand what I want and what I'm doing with my life, more than I ever have before. Everything makes sense this morning."

Hannah finally smiles properly and comes over to me. She hugs me tightly and I hug her back, enjoying her. Yes, this is perfect. We can part on good terms, all our silly promises and imaginary futures still between us, and never see each other again. I don't want to grow to resent or even hate her. I don't want our happiness to die. Probably it will for her, once the reality that struck me yesterday hits home for her in a few months from now, but I am selfish by nature and decide I don't mind. How she chooses to feel and remember me is her business.

I tell her about Harrison's juice spill and she comes out to help. By the time we return he claims to be done, although what is left he has pretty much just pushed around on the floor to different corners of the kitchen. Hannah takes over with the expertise of someone who has always wanted little more than to run a home, and soon she and Harrison are chatting pleasantly while I stand back uselessly. I hear Deb's shower finish and rush to use the other one. I start the water running and as I strip off my phone falls from my pocket. I notice a missed call from Jamie. I lean out the door while I call her back so she can hear me and tell her I slept in and I'm about to leave home to drop Harrison off with her.

"That's such a crazy coincidence," she admits. "I turned my phone alarm off over the weekend I was away and forgot to set it again so I slept in today, too. But I'm literally sitting in my car in the driveway. I can come over and still take Harrison to school, if he's going?"

"Yeah, he's pretty adamant that he is. He slept well last night and he's heaps better this morning. It's alright, I'll drop him with you. I have to drive over to Deb's anyway and pick her up. I still have her car." I embellish the story by adding, "I have a load of missed calls from her."

"I bet she's pissed you're late," Jamie agrees lightly. "Glad it's with you and not me. Okay, see you shortly then."

I have the quickest shower I can manage while still getting the sand out of my hair, the sleep out of my eyes and the blood off my arm and the back of my leg where I was cut yesterday by the glass. My whole body aches but when I turn the water off I hope I look something akin to normal. I dry off and wrap the towel around myself as I go in search of the bags I brought over last night.

Apparently I dropped them in the living room. I grab mine and call Harrison over to take his. I instruct him to go and get changed ready for school. Hannah finishes with the spill in the kitchen and leans on the bench to watch idly, contentedly, as my son scoots off to do as he's told. Deb comes out of her bedroom, still buttoning her jeans.

"I told Angel it's your fault," she tells me. "Said you weren't answering your phone and you've got my car so I'm stuck. I said if you didn't call back or turn up shortly I'd get him to come get me. So you're on your way, if anyone calls and asks."

"Good, I told Jamie I slept through my alarm," I say. "I've got to go drop Harrison off at the Batistas' on my alleged way over here. I'll have to double back and get you."

"What? We'll be even later," Deb comments in annoyance. She goes looking for shoes. "Tell her I chewed your ear off and you came got me first."

"Running late?" Hannah asks, without spite or concern. Deb gets down on her hands and knees to reach under the sofa but pauses long enough to give the other woman a withering glare.

"What was your first clue?" she asks coldly. Hannah purses her lips, irritated but not brave enough to disturb the shaky peace, and looks away. I feel content. Everything is back the way it's meant to be. Deb is back – after the numerous scares yesterday where I thought I'd lost her forever, once to Saxon and then to her own darkness – and that means everything else is alright. I start back into the bathroom.

"What's that?" Hannah's words stop me from closing the door behind myself. I glance back and watch as she ventures over to the door. My sister ignores her completely and flattens herself on the floor to get her whole arm under the couch.

"Ouch," she winces, gingerly swapping arms when her shoulder twinges. "I'm blaming you for this, too, Dex. There's no way _I_ kicked my fucking boot this far under here."

Likewise, I am certain there's no way _I_ have anything to do with the shoe finding its way so deep underneath the chair. She was many times more active on that sofa than I was last night and it was she who took the shoes off in the first place before I even came home last night. However I don't say any of this and watch Hannah pick up a large yellow envelope from the floor right in front of the door.

"Weird of the postman to slide stuff under the door these days," she comments, straightening. "Does he usually do that?" Her eyes narrow into a confused frown as she turns the envelope over.

"Do what?" Deb finally fishes her shoe out and fits it onto her foot while she's still lying on the floor. Hannah starts to read: " _Attention: D Morgan. Give me Hannah McKay within twenty-four hours or this goes public._ "

" _What_?!" Deb and I demand simultaneously, hurrying to reach Hannah as she opens the unsealed envelope and slides out its contents: one large colour photograph. We all freeze – Hannah with the photo in her hands, Deb with only one shoe on, me naked except for a damp towel – and stare at the image.

"Um," Hannah says finally, and looks up at me expectantly. _Um_ is right. Despite being taken in the dark without a flash, quite clearly it's a picture of my sister and me making out on the couch. Towards the end, I gather, from the facts that her shirt is smoothed down to her hips and that I am sitting up with her on my lap, my arms wrapped around her back and her hands on my face. Were it two totally different people, I might have conformed to social convention and said the pair in the photo looked hot together – it's pretty obvious even from this slightly grainy shot that we're incredibly into each other, eyes closed, holds tight, mouths pressed desperately close – but given my present company I know this isn't something I can comment on.

"Um," I repeat, hoping Hannah mistakes my dumbfounded look as one of ignorance. Photographic evidence is somewhat harder to defend against than Hannah's outlandish suspicions. Deb takes the yellow envelope, reads the message and says, almost to herself, "That's Elway's handwriting."

This means little to Hannah. "You're right," she says coolly to me with a humourless smile. "Suddenly, this morning, everything makes _sense_."

Danger signals go off in my head. Hannah knows, Hannah knows, Hannah knows... She looks only at me, quietly accusing, even though, obviously, this is half Deb's fault, too. This doesn't fit my plan at all. Hannah is meant to be happy and ignorant. Unhappy Hannah is dangerous Hannah, and dangerous Hannah is not a Hannah I can work with.

"What makes sense? That motherfucker," Deb comments angrily, snatching the photo to examine it more closely. "He made it look like _you_." She turns the picture to show me. Like I need a reminder. I was there. "Fucking Elway. Next time I see him..." She can't finish her sentence and ends instead with a furious growl.

Hannah frowns at Deb, attention pulled from one Morgan to the other. "What do you mean? Made it _look_ like Dexter?"

"I mean it's not him," Deb clarifies, frowning as well. "I mean it's digitally altered. What the fuck else would I mean?"

"You mean you want me to believe this is all some elaborate ruse?"

"I mean," Deb says slowly, offensively, as though Hannah is deaf or thick, now showing her the picture, "my fuckwit ex-boss is being a cock-faced jizz-bucket and doctoring photos of me that look like I'm pashing my _brother_. And _threatening_ me with them. That fucking sad case is going to regret this." Hannah's blue eyes flick back to me, still suspicious. Deb glares at her. "What? _What_? No! _Honestly_?" My sister's pale look of horror is convincing; I'm envious of her ever-increasing ability to out-lie me. She was never a good liar. I don't like that it changed. "With _Dexter_? He's my brother!"

"You aren't _normal_ siblings," Hannah shoots back. I am momentarily annoyed.

"That's unfair. You just said you were fine with-"

"Fine with the fighting and the making up twenty seconds later and the slamming doors and the screaming and the weird looks that are actually silent conversations and the whispering at night and the siding with her instead of me and the calling out for her in your sleep and the neediness and reliance and over-protectiveness," Hannah states. "Yeah – learning to live with all that. But _not_ fine with you _sleeping with someone else_."

"I'm not!" I protest, annoyed. I jab a finger at the photo. "She's my sister, and that's not me." I turn to Deb for reinforcement, since it's her story and I'm just freeloading off it.

"There's a fucking big leap from fake photograph from a known shit-stirring douchebag to the weird-ass conclusions _you_ seem to be drawing," she tells Hannah, who laughs once, unamused.

"Forgive me for jumping to _conclusions_ when faced with a darn good fake of you sitting on my boyfriend's lap in the middle of the night with your tongue down his throat and his hands all over you."

"Please," Deb sneers. "You must know how fucking stupid you sound. It doesn't even look real. Obviously I'm not fucking around with my own brother, and obviously he's not fucking around with me. After all," she adds sweetly, "he has _you_." They eye each other hatefully in the pause that follows. "And what's normal in your book? Should I be sneaking poison into his fucking Weet-bix? Would you like that better than...? Fuck, eww," Deb finishes disgustedly, shoving the picture back into Hannah's hands as though it offends her. "You thought I _actually_ put my tongue in his mouth? Yours has been in there. Besides which, we're kind of _related_ , in case you'd forgotten." Deb turns her glare on me. "Where in fuck do you find these crazy bitches?"

My sister rolls her eyes and my girlfriend wraps an arm around her own waist self-consciously, unsure now. The picture is pretty convincing but so is Deb's disgust. They both back down a little in the pause that follows.

"Who is it, then?" Hannah asks finally, waving the photo helplessly. Deb turns to gesture at the sofa.

"My ex Joey came over last night and we hooked up-"

"Debra," Hannah interrupts, distracted, "you're... bleeding."

And she is. The back of her pale blue shirt is stained at the shoulder by fresh, dark red blood. She cranes her neck to look back at it.

"Damn it all, I only just put this on," she complains. "There are so many blood-stained shirts in my laundry basket already." Un-self-consciously, she tugs the shirt off and over her head, surprising both Hannah and I. In a bra and jeans she starts back to her room but now I can see the disturbed wound and notice that she has completely opened it back up, either while in the shower or while reaching under the couch. I reach for her arm to stop her, forgetting that I am holding up a towel.

"Deb-"

"Ugh – Dexter!" Deb screeches, covering her face with her hands when my towel starts to fall away and I hurry to catch it in time. I quickly rearrange the towel as I walk to a box of tissues and grab a wad that I press against the split in Deb's skin. "Just go and get dressed, will you?" my sister tells me impatiently, reaching awkwardly around to try to take the tissues from me. "We're going to be late. I'll deal with this myself."

"Hannah," I instruct, jerking my head at my girlfriend to beckon her closer. She puts the photo down on the breakfast bar. "Hold this. Keep pressure on it-"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Deb snaps, trying to wrench away as Hannah reluctantly takes the makeshift compress from me. My own hand free, I grab her elbow and pull her back. "Listen to you: _Keep pressure on it_. You said yourself, it's only a fucking vein, and it's hardly even bleeding, it's not like I'm going to bleed to death. It's so... Hey, what are you doing?" she demands now. I have released her arm and thrust my hand into the pocket of her tight jeans. It looks entirely indecent and Hannah raises her eyebrows at me, shocked. These aren't even the same jeans as yesterday so I don't know for sure I'll find what I'm looking for, but my sister is more predictable than she thinks she is. My fingers close on the edges of a torn, crumpled, cut-up, folded photograph and I pull it free. We both stare at it for a second as I hold it between us. Triumphantly I throw it at her; she catches it with both hands against her chest.

"What is that?" Hannah asks. We don't answer.

"Fuckface," Deb comments, recognising defeat.

"You promised," I remind her with a tight smile, "so suck it up."

Deb shakes her head at me, revolted with my playing dirty. Right now she doesn't look like she loves me a great deal. After a long pause she glances back at Hannah.

"I have a first aid kit in the bathroom. Can you tape this for me while Dex gets ready for work?"

Hannah shoots me an incredulous look over Deb's shoulder.

"Uh, yes, I can do that," she agrees warily, looking like she'd really rather not but isn't silly enough to refuse and the two of them walk past me while I stand there, shocked by my own win. I really didn't expect such quick success. Deb waves the photo in my face angrily as she goes.

"Don't forget, asshole, you promised, too," she threatens, "and it won't always work in only _your_ favour."

I raise my hand and shoulder in a helpless half-shrug. This _is_ in her damn favour. If the cut isn't fucking covered up it'll just keep bleeding, no matter how many times she changes her outfit. Idiot. I allow the window of opportunity to throw in a last word pass me by. Deb and Hannah go into Deb's room; Hannah casts me a final disbelieving look. I agree completely. It's not at all like Deb to opt to be alone with Hannah, and even less like her to swallow her pride and ask for help. It's worriedly out of character for her to ask _Hannah_ for help. I hesitate as they disappear from my line of sight. Should I be concerned? Is my sister not better today? Is Deb going to try to kill Hannah? In light of last night's episode, and some of the things she's said since, I shouldn't discount it.

"Two women walked into that room; two had better walk out," I call in warning. They don't answer and I hope that means they are just glaring silently in my direction and not silently murdering each other. In the other bathroom I hurriedly get dressed and then run back out into the kitchen to throw together a lunch for Harrison. He appears, fully dressed but with pants on backwards. I help him change them around and then zip his lunchbox into his school bag. Deb and Hannah return, and Deb is wearing another shirt. The pair doesn't seem any _more_ hateful than usual, but neither is the air of iciness between them even marginally alleviated by what could have just been, if either had bothered to try being nice for a change, a companionable bonding moment in the bathroom as Hannah retaped Deb's shoulder. Well, in her defence, Hannah has made lots of attempts to be nice. It's Deb that's being difficult. I wouldn't want her any other way.

"Let's get out of here," Deb prompts, leaning over the breakfast bar to grab her car keys. Her elbow knocks Elway's photo to the floor. Hannah goes over and picks it up when Deb doesn't care to.

"Some things are better kept out of reach of children, don't you think? Even if they are _fictitious_ , or alleged to be," she says frigidly, returning the picture to its envelope. She taps it against the bench top and addresses me. "What are you going to do about this?"

I assume she's referring to the handwritten threat on the envelope. I take it from her, thinking.

"Do as he asks, of course," Deb quips, pushing away from the bench. "I like my dignity more than I like you. Dex, come _on_. Harrison, let's go and get buckled in."

"Bye, Hannah," my son calls, nonchalant, over his shoulder as he follows his aunt out the door. It's enough to break Hannah's bad mood, and she smiles and calls goodbye after him.

"Don't listen to Deb," I remind Hannah, kissing her quickly. There's no fire, no light, no epiphany, no return to life. Just a kiss. "I'll sort Elway out. No one threatens my family. He's a piece of shit and now he's given me an excuse to deal to him."

"I know you will," Hannah says, trying to smile again for me. She eyes the yellow envelope. Very quietly, she asks, "Dexter... is that really fake? Just tell me."

"What do you think?"

"I think it looks pretty damn real and it would explain a lot."

"It's not real, Hannah," I assure her, convincingly, I hope. "Of course it isn't. I'm as shocked and freaked-out by it as you are."

"It's funny you say that, because you _did_ look shocked when you saw the picture, but you don't seem particularly upset," Hannah notes. I shrug. I _was_ shocked at the inopportune timing of the picture's arrival and the unideal person who found it. I'm _not_ really that upset.

"I'm annoyed. I think Elway was really bitter yesterday about what happened at Vogel's and he's trying to get back at Deb and me at the same time in the slimiest way he knows how. But I'll deal with it." Outside, Deb leans on the car horn. It blares, long and constant, and I head out. "I'm sorry. Can we talk more later?"

Hannah nods, pressing her lips together. "Alright. I'll pretend to believe you. See you tonight?"

I nod and leave. Deb is sitting in the drivers' seat, eyes full of challenge, door still open, with the heel of her hand firmly pressed in the middle of the steering wheel. Even as I approach she doesn't let up. Harrison is grinning in the backseat.

"You're the biggest pain," I snap at my sister, reaching into the car and wrenching her out. The awful noise finally stops. "You suffered a mental health crisis less than ten hours ago – I'll leave out what you asked me to do with a knife, shall I? – and you think I'm letting you drive?"

She rolls her eyes but doesn't argue. She climbs into the passenger seat and we join peak hour traffic. It's a slow, frustrating drive to the Batistas'. One block away, I pull over and order Deb out. She's unhappy about it but I'm adamant. I told Jamie I would drop Harrison off before going to Deb's, and some obsessive-compulsive aspect of my personality balks at having to undermine my own cover story.

Harrison overhears everything we say, of course, and when I arrive outside our destination he leans forward and says to me, "I'll just pretend we slept at our house, okay? So Jamie doesn't ask if Hannah is at Aunt Deb's and so Aunt Deb doesn't get in any trouble."

"Aunt Deb is lucky she has you," I tell him, as Jamie comes out of the house. "I appreciate you helping me to take care of her."

"I know it's your job, but I can just help," he suggests, and I smile.

Jamie opens Harrison's door and fusses over him, insisting I stay where I am. I tell her that the hydration medication is in the front pocket of the school bag and she says she'll see me at my place after work. She encourages me to hurry over to Deb's to avoid incurring her wrath; Harrison catches my eye but says nothing. Maybe he's more subtle than I thought.

I return for my sister and she gets back in.

"Thanks for just leaving me on the side of the road like a stray," she comments. She shifts the yellow envelope from the seat to her lap as she sits down, and then buckles herself in. "I've got to say, I'm not feeling the love this morning."

"What do you want to do about Elway?" I ask, choosing not to let her wind me up.

"What do you want to do about Hannah?" she shoots back. "I'm reading between the lines here and assuming you want to see Elway separated evenly between four plastic bags and tossed into the ocean, but if you're not going to do the same to your jealous-as-fuck poisoning bitch of a girlfriend, well, that shit's just inequitable."

"I wasn't going to _kill_ Elway," I insist, though the mental image is not one I am adverse to. "He doesn't fit the Code."

"Fuck your Code," Deb responds. She glares out the front window. "That's such a fucking cop-out. You just use it to justify _what you do_ to yourself, because it's how _Dad_ justified what he did to you. The _Code_ appeases your conscience, when you need it to."

"I don't have a conscience," I say automatically, then immediately wish I hadn't. It's a pre-prepared response, what I was always told by Dad and later by Vogel. I recall our confrontation with the Vogels yesterday and Deb screaming over my shoulder. _My brother was a good kid, he was never going to hurt me, he could have turned out fine_. I think on my fuzzy memory of early this morning on the beach, Brian saying, _you're just a killer_ , and Deb telling me she thinks that underneath everything I was taught to believe, all the hard-set emotional barriers, all the terrible things I've done, there's someone normal and maybe even salvageable. Well, she didn't say that, exactly, but I've taken her words an extra step. The breaking through of feelings I've never experienced this fully, the barrage that caused the panic attack, are rather persuasive evidence of her theory. I'm a real boy underneath it all.

"Just like nothing hurts you?" Deb asks innocently, reaching across for my arm. I notice her fingernails getting close to the scab on my forearm and whip it away from her. "You must have said sorry to me twenty times yesterday. How can you be sorry if you don't have a conscience?"

"Alright, I don't _not_ have a conscience," I amend. "I have you."

"I'm just a person, Dex. And so are you. A really fucking damaged, messed-up, selfish person with post-traumatic stress disorder so long-running that you think it's just your normal state of being. Maybe you keep it at a distance – maybe you use me as some sort of stand-in for what it tells you so you can keep believing it's not there, but you do have a conscience. I would know," she adds authoritatively, "because I love you and happen to know you're a serial killer, and so I am an expert on all things decent about you because I have had to actively identify them to myself to try to justify why the hell I would still love you. You keep saying you're different from everyone else but after all this time I think you're just used to hiding behind the Code and the 'no feelings' story you were fed so you don't have to face the facts: that you're human, that you feel the same things as everyone else, that you know killing is wrong and that it affects you."

"Why, thank you, Dr Deb, for your professional diagnosis," I mock. But I'm reeling from her conclusion. Is that even _possible_? PTSD? For a lifetime? The event that changed me was horrific, traumatising without question. So bad, in fact, that my mind blocked the whole memory of it to protect me, only to reluctantly let me discover it much later in life after significant digging. So bad... that I have remained emotionally traumatised even after identifying the cause? So bad that I have spent my whole life in the same kind of disassociated mental state that I found my sister in last night?

"Whatever, asshole. You know I'm fucking right. Anyway," she redirects firmly, "Elway." She raps her nails on the envelope. "Twenty-four hours and he's going to share this. And you know he's got a fuckload more than just this one. Who knows how long he was standing out there? _Attention: D Morgan. Give me Hannah McKay within twenty-four hours or this goes public_. Cockface. What do you think he means, public? Tumblr? Six o'clock news? Like the world fucking cares?"

"Some people might recognise you from T.V. but they won't know me and it's not going to interest the general public even if they do. Public must mean people we know. Work," I confirm, and she screws up her nose.

"No offence, but I really don't want anyone there to know I kissed you."

"Likewise."

"But Elway's going to spam the shit out of their inboxes tomorrow morning if we don't hand over Hannah."

"Apparently." If I don't get to him first.

"And that's not an option either, because if we do we're admitting to having harboured her in the first place," Deb ponders with a sigh. "Jacob Elway gloating and wealthy and you and I imprisoned right next to Hannah fucking McKay – not an ending I'm cool with. Fix it," she demands moodily, tossing the envelope onto the dashboard, "and if you're not creative enough to think of a way to do that without killing him, just pretend otherwise and lie to me. If you kill him, I don't want to fucking know about it."

"I'll try my best," I assure her, an idea already taking shape. We change topics for the remainder of the drive and discuss our concerns about Vogel and where she might have gone. We know the doctor is hurt and crazy with misplaced grief, and this makes her a danger to us both, and for now, we know very little else. Her actual intentions are a complete mystery. The pushy, clingy, anxious old woman desperately trying to have me help her fix her son has been replaced with a furious, at least slightly delirious psychopath with a gun. The respectable psychiatrist is now a fugitive hiding from the law. It occurs to both Deb and I that if we wanted to we could just try phoning Dr Vogel and _asking_ where we stand and what she's planning, even try reasoning with her and mending the bridges we burnt yesterday, but even if this is the sensible choice we both err away from it, reluctant to get reinvolved with the mad doctor again so soon.

I finally pull the car into the parking lot at work. I switch the engine off and open the door to get out, but Deb suddenly grabs my arm and begs me to wait.

"What? What is it?" I ask, immediately on alert and looking around for what's caught her attention. She's staring intently up at the Miami Metropolitan Police Station.

"It's... nothing. Just..." She trails off, avoiding my gaze. Her cheeks brighten with colour. "This is so stupid, but... how are we supposed to _act_ when we go inside?"

I pull the door shut so we're enclosed in the car all alone again. I understand exactly what she's talking about.

"Like nothing's changed," I say. "Nothing _has_ changed. We said some stuff-"

" _Did_ some stuff," Deb interjects flatly.

"-and _didn't_ do other stuff," I remind her, "but everything's the same. I love you exactly the same as ever." I just understand it better now.

Deb's head falls back against the seat. "I feel like... things are meant to be different, now that we've said what we've said."

"They _will_ be different," I agree. "I'll try to be less of a selfish bastard and I'm going to stay with you and keep trying to change for you, but nothing's _changed_." I frown, hearing the contradiction in my own words. "You know what I mean. I'll try to be better. I'll help you _get_ better. But what's already good doesn't need to change. I'm still your brother. I want to always be your brother." Her hand is still on my wrist. I turn my arm so that her palm is next to mine. "Do... Do you want that?"

She looks up at me sharply. "Of course I do."

"I'm your brother and you're my sister and we're in love," I say bluntly. "It's truly, hopelessly fucked. Other than that I don't have a label for it. It's just what it's always been – sometimes good, sometimes horrendous – and nothing we've learnt from other relationships is useful here. It's new ground and there's no need to conform to anything because there's nothing to compare it with. We just need to do what's right for _us_."

"For us," Deb repeats softly.

"I mean, if you really want things to be different," I go on, "we could walk in holding hands? That's what being in love means, isn't it? Romance, flowers delivered with little love notes, and PDAs in the office? Have my amended birth certificate revoked, get married?"

"Fuck no," Deb says, horrified. She takes her hand away from me, and glares when she catches me smirking. "You're a fucking creep. Alright, so no girlfriend-boyfriend bullshit. God, that'd be so fucking weird. Just normal. All the good stuff, only the good stuff," she adds, not smiling but casting me a friendlier look. Then she rolls her eyes and throws open her door. "Like I'd fucking marry you, anyway – I'm way too good for you."

"I couldn't agree more," I say with a smile. I take the yellow envelope. "So: are we good?"

"If you mean, will I please stop trying to apply previous relationships to this one and just let things be and stop actively sabotaging everything, then yeah, I'll try," she agrees with a sigh. We get out of the car and she points at me across the roof in warning. "That goes for you, too. No treating me like I'm your _girlfriend_. I'm not. I'm your fucking sister. No getting jealous when I talk to guys-"

"No making my lunch for me," I add, shutting my door.

"No fucking bubble baths and creepy candlelit dinners." Deb visibly shudders at the thought of being cutesy or lovey-dovey with anyone, least of all me.

"No controlling what I do in my spare time."

"No talking about _the future_."

"No pet names."

"No judging how I spend my money on useless shit."

"No checking my phone for messages from other girls," I quip.

"No telling me what I can and can't wear," Deb finishes. She closes her car door and we start inside. "So... just like normal?"

"Provided normal's alright with you?"

"Normal is... looking better today than it was yesterday," Deb admits, looking up at the sky until it's about to disappear behind the building, then looking back over at me. "Yesterday's normal was pretty fucking bad, and the days before that were about the same. Today's normal seems nice. I think I can handle normal today. But what the fuck's normal? Don't think I've even once tried to poison your Weet-bix."

We smile across at each other and go in to work.

 


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I bought Dexter blood slide earrings from the Showtime store and they're in the mail so I nearly own those. Does that count?

We've missed the morning briefing. Angel is in his office with Deputy Marshal Max Clayton, a fact I'm not delighted about. Quinn glances up at us from his desk as we're waylaid by Miller, but his greeting smile is civil without being warm. He is clearly burnt. I wonder what Deb said to get rid of him last night. Miller tells us that no news of Evelyn Vogel has surfaced overnight and she is eager for me to get to work on the blood evidence. The doctor is still missing and her part in the Oliver Saxon tale is unclear except that he was in her house. Mostly my colleagues seem to be just worried for her, a poor sick old lady who has randomly lost the plot, shot at someone she knows and run off. The dead prostitute has been identified and her family notified; I don't recognise her name and don't pay it much mind. She wasn't chosen by her killer for who she was. She was chosen for who she resembled.

"Deb; Dex," Batista says, and we both turn as he steps out of his office with Clayton. "You made it."

"Dexter's fault," Deb says immediately. Miller smiles back at us as she walks away, amused. Just normal bickering siblings, that's us.

"Naturally," Batista agrees. He frowns when he gets a better look at us. "Should you be here, Deb? You look-"

"Terrible?" she interrupts. She does. She looks like she hasn't slept in days, which she hasn't, and she hasn't done her makeup or done much about removing yesterday's. There is also no hiding the redness of her eyes, which clearly scream to everyone that she's been crying. "Don't bother, Dexter already tried to get me to stay home."

"Maybe you should have listened. And maybe he should have taken the same advice," Angel suggests, angling his gaze at me. I must look as exhausted as my sister. I shrug.

"I was up with Harrison," I explain, which is enough for him. "And when have you known Deb to listen to me?"

"Fair enough," Angel relents. He gestures to Clayton. "The deputy marshal was hoping to talk through some of the details of McKay's arrest with you, Deb. If you're up to it."

"Just need to clarify a few things," Clayton says relaxedly when Deb glances at him in surprise. "I've hit a dead end and I think I need to start over from a new angle. Would you mind?"

 _I_ mind. He looks tranquil and unsuspicious but I don't like that he's here. Aside from my relationship with my sister, which for the first time in a long time is looking stable and promising, most elements of my life – Hannah, Vogel, Elway – seem to be verging on collapse, only just holding themselves together. Clayton was meant to have been put off our trail yesterday, and while he seems to have a perfectly reasonable excuse for wanting to talk to Deb this morning, I worry that in looking for a new angle he might find one and might become yet another problem to add to my pile. The straw that broke the camel's back.

"No, of course not," Deb answers automatically, looking to Angel for permission to sit out of work after only just arriving. He steps away from his office.

"You can talk in here," he offers, and I like it even less that he won't be sitting in. Deb nods and starts forward. I resist the urge to grab her hand. I haven't really been apart from her since she climbed on top of me and forced a knife into my hands. Well, aside from situations that I chose, and they were only short and controlled. As nice as Clayton seems, I still have the memory from my nightmare two nights ago of him playing a part in dream-Deb's horrific murder and so he is an enemy for all intents and purposes. I don't want to leave my sister alone with an enemy, especially while she's in this state of recovery. I'm convinced she's better but I know, no matter how strong she seems this morning, she still has a long away to go before she's _all better_. I feel innately protective of her and I want to keep her near for always. But that's me dreaming again, and the reality is that Deb is a big girl who has to do some things on her own.

"About what?"

Everyone freezes. Thomas Matthews, the deputy chief, has walked into the main office and noticed us standing in a little knot together. He approaches and waits for an answer.

"Going over the Hannah McKay case," Clayton explains smoothly, to which Tom frowns.

"Detective Morgan has already disclosed everything she knows to you on that case," he states. His abruptness seems to surprise the other. "I'm not sure what else you expect to hear that you haven't heard before. It sounds to me like you're grasping at straws now, Deputy Marshal, and wasting my department's time in doing so."

Clayton nods once, graciously, not missing a beat. "Very possibly, Deputy Chief, though I hope that's not the case. Of course I need to be comprehensive in ensuring I have covered all possible bases before I can throw in the towel."

The two men eye each other, and it occurs to me that I may be finally looking at someone who actually views the deputy marshal with dislike. I'm not sure why, beyond the belief that our time is being wasted, but Matthews is giving off a very obvious aura of disdain towards the newcomer. Well, I'm glad someone can bring themselves to hate Clayton, since I can't. Respectable professionals I admire; apparently Matthews has reasons not to.

"Tom's right, I don't know what else I can tell you that can help," Deb says to Clayton, "but of course I want this bitch brought in, so whatever I can do to help..."

"I really appreciate it, Detective," Clayton says, dragging his gaze from Tom's to offer her a grateful smile. "I'll try to be brief."

"I'll ensure you are," Tom says briskly, ushering Deb into Angel's office and following her. He's clearly unhappy about this; Clayton looks just as unhappy to realise that the deputy chief intends to sit in on the interview. I'm happier than either of them. Tom's impatience and implicit trust in Deb will prevent the conversation going too long or too deep. "I need my workforce. We have a double homicide to work and a missing witness to find. Keep it short."

The three go inside, and Deb casts me a quick look over her shoulder. The door closes behind her, separating us.

"Angel, can I talk with you? Privately?" I ask, snatching my chance to deal with another of my enemies. I gesture with a jerk of my head towards my lab; frowning at my cryptic behaviour, he comes with me and I shut us inside the narrow workspace.

"What's up?" he asks warily. "You've been acting odd the past few days, Dex. Sleeping through your alarm – have you _ever_ done that before? And that sibling telepathy or whatever yesterday, you just _knew_ something was wrong with Deb. You didn't say it but I knew you were worried even before anyone had a clue what was going on at Vogel's."

I fake a clueless shrug. Fuck it, now even Angel's cottoning on to my oddness? He's my friend, or what passes for one, and he's meant to be, like Deb, implicitly on my side. I have to believe he still is. I hand him the yellow envelope but keep a grip on it.

"Shit's been rough, Angel. I've been worried sick about Deb, you know, falling apart again. She's had some setbacks. Now swear on your daughter's life you won't tell Deb I showed you this," I insist. He swears, looking even more puzzled, and I let go. In doing so I release Elway's hold over my family. He only has power over us as long as we're worried about this photo being seen. Batista turns it over and notes the message. I say, "Deb found it slipped under her door this morning. She says it's Jacob Elway's handwriting."

"The man's obsessed," the lieutenant confirms grimly. "Just can't leave this Hannah McKay business to the experts, and now's he's pissed with you two as well. I caught him here early when I got in today. Chatting with, what's his name? Roberts? Robbins? Just lurking, pretending to be researching some case. I told him he had better beat it before you two got in because after his conduct yesterday, I might have to turn a blind eye if your sister needed to alleviate some of her frustration on him."

I force a small smile and make myself relax. Angel _is_ on my side, or at least, he's on Deb's, and I'm on hers, so that makes us teammates.

"After this, you might need to turn two blind eyes, because I might be helping her," I warn, nodding at the envelope. "If you're called to a crime scene and you find him torn to shreds, know it was us and he fucking deserved it."

"Good to know." Angel doesn't believe me for a second. I trust that by presenting him with obvious evidence or near-admissions of guilt he will assume my innocence and look for more realistic alternative explanations, and I have confidence that he will do the same with the picture. He shakes the envelope's contents out into his hand and his eyes widen in honest shock when he sees the picture. He stares. He blinks. He needs no help getting to the conclusion I couldn't convince Hannah of. He immediately assumes the picture to be faked – why else would I be showing it to him? – and demands why we even came to work instead of heading straight to a judge to get restraining and suppression orders. Elway has crossed not one line but many, Batista agrees vehemently, in invading my sister's privacy, trespassing on her property, editing the photographs to represent such an offensive image and then blackmailing her for information _anyone_ can see she clearly doesn't possess. I am privately glad for his loyalty but continue to act concerned, insisting we not involve the legal system at this point to avoid the potential embarrassment to Deb, but really because Elway knows too much and while nobody at Miami Metro will take his word seriously, an impartial judge might. It really wouldn't do for Jacob Elway to have the opportunity to dob me in as party to the Oliver Saxon homicide.

"He's clearly got no sense of boundaries," Angel is saying now. "Too long in that line of work, obviously." He taps the envelope on his thigh, still frowning. He begins to compose a text message. I shift inconspicuously to get a glance at the addressee: Jamie.

"I'm worried, Angel. Did you read this?" I redirect his attention to the writing on the envelope. "Give him McKay or he'll make this public? And what, spread it around the office via Roberts or Robbins or whoever? That's harassment, isn't it? He knows we don't know anything, or we'd have told the deputy marshal. So this is just about dicking Debra around."

"And you, too, apparently," my boss comments. He sends his text. "He's gone to a lot of effort here. He's got pictures of both of you, then, to superimpose your face onto... that's Quinn, isn't it?" He shakes his head, obviously annoyed. "He was wearing blue yesterday."

"Deb said he stayed a while when he dropped her off last night," I offer, and Angel goes to the door, throws it open and leans out.

"Quinn," he snaps, voice carrying across the office. Deb's ex looks up from his desk. "Did you hook up with Deb last night?"

I wince at the tactlessness and am glad Deb is behind a glass wall; Quinn blinks and looks about; the few others who heard pretend to not have.

"What does she say?" he asks finally, carefully.

"She says you did," Batista answers shortly. Quinn shrugs.

"Alright. I did. But she didn't go for it," he says, and Angel closes the door again with a snap.

"Can't help himself," he mutters. "Breaks my sister's heart and trying for yours five minutes later. Keep her clear of him, Dex." He shakes his head again. He looks back at the picture to redirect his focus. "Sorry. I could probably have handled that better. But you've got nothing to worry about, Dexter. Quinn can confirm that the pictures are of him. If Elway publishes or distributes the picture, it's slander."

"I don't want him to distribute it!" I explode. "Debra doesn't need this! She was _shot_ at yesterday by her own damn doctor! It doesn't matter if everyone knows that this is a bad fucking joke, it's still ridiculous that we should even have to say so. This is just Elway being a pig. I swear, Angel, I fucking warned him to keep away from her, and now I just want to-"

"Alright, Dex, just calm down," Batista placates, resting a hand on my shoulder, distracted and concerned by my escalating voice and presence. I breathe heavily, venting a false anger that is not at all false. "You did the right thing, bringing this to me instead of taking it into your own hands. Pretty sure you'd have had your ass handed to you," he adds with a quick, kind smile, because I'm the useless, amiable, gentle Morgan, as everyone knows. "We can deal with this the sensible way. We can have this image and any others he's made suppressed before he even gets them out there."

"Without Deb knowing?" I check. "I don't want her to have to tell all this to a judge if we can help it. I just want this to go away for her."

"No judge would do that without hearing from her," Angel says, going to the other door, "but Elway's dirt and we don't need a judge to treat him like it. Vince," he orders the chief forensic analyst into my lab. Masuka steps in, bewildered, and Batista locks him in with us. "Can you prove a photograph has been edited?"

"What photograph?"

"An edited one," Angel answers brusquely. "Could you prove it was fake? To a court?"

"I would need to see the photo," Masuka says, curiosity alighted, to which Angel irritably replies, "Well, you can't."

"It's alright, Angel," I say, retrieving the offending picture. I hand it over to my closest colleague, upside down. "You never saw this."

"Never," he agrees, and turns it over. His eyes bulge in surprise. "No. _No way_. I'm afraid I'm definitely seeing it."

I sigh irritably. Too much to ask. "Fine. But if Deb asks-"

"I say, I've just seen the hottest fucking photo of you-"

"Vince," Angel warns. "Jacob Elway is harassing Deb and threatening to share this. Could you prove and testify that this is a doctored photograph in a case of slander?" He looks down at his phone as he receives a text message.

"Testify?" Masuka repeats, uncertain. He finally looks up, reluctantly, at me. "Elway's really being a creep to her, huh?" I nod, and he looks back down at the image. He's silent a little while, then suddenly seems to be hit with inspiration. He turns the picture to us with objective professionalism. "Well, yeah. Look at the shading on Dexter's face. His is way better lit than Deb's, and shadowed from a different angle, probably a picture taken at a different time of day then cut and superimposed." He gestures with a flourish to another part of the photo. "Gaze next upon the dark, blurred area around the head – clumsy attempts to blend the two photographs. Easily overlooked by the casual observer, but not clean enough to escape the likes of me."

"Thanks Vince," Angel says, dialling on his phone. "Exactly what I needed to hear." He brings the phone to his ear and waits for the connection. The other person answers after only one ring. "Elway? Lieutenant Angel Batista... I'll tell you to what you owe this pleasure, you son of a bitch," he snarls, while Vince and I stand there, silent. "This is a courtesy call to let you know that if _anyone_ in this building or otherwise connected with the Morgan family receives communication from you that includes or references falsified images of Debra and Dexter, you'll find yourself in front of a judge defending your sorry ass against a case of slander and defamation of character that I am in the process right now of preparing." He listens briefly to the quick phone chatter, then interrupts. "Yes, I'm looking at your so-called 'evidence' right now. We're all looking at it. It's a sick, weak joke, and no one's laughing, bro." Silence on the other end. Elway wasn't expecting that. He expected me to keep it hidden, an embarrassing secret, but in disclosing it I have pulled his weapon from his hands. He gathers his excuses and his voice starts again, but Angel won't hear it. "Save it, Jacob. A world-class forensic analyst says it's fake, my own sister says she dropped Dexter off at his own house last night and she saw him again this morning before he went to Deb's-" I'm retrospectively grateful for my OCD moment this morning, dropping Deb at the corner to maintain the validity of my story "-and moreover, neither of them made asses of themselves yesterday trying to make anyone's life difficult, so fucking save it. Keep your disgusting fantasies and doctored photos to yourself, and stay away from my people, or I'll be seeing you in court."

He hangs up with a flourish and I feel like applauding. Angel has a way of handling things like this that I really admire. If Elway knows what's good for him, he'll avoid making an enemy out of the homicide division's lieutenant. Surely the opportunity to humiliate Deb and me isn't worth all that. There are other ways to track and obtain Hannah.

"Thanks, Angel," I say, with genuine gratefulness. It won't keep Elway away forever but I've kept my promise to Deb to fix the immediate problem of our indiscretion becoming public knowledge.

"Don't mention it," my boss replies, giving me back the envelope. "Just keep me posted, alright?"

I assure him I will and he leaves me alone with Masuka. I turn to my colleague. His expressionless visage makes me feel awkward.

"I didn't even think to look for those sorts of clues, you know, to prove it," I say weakly, not sure how to resolve this conversation and make him leave. I sit down at my desk as though I'm about to get into my work for the day. "Thanks for helping out."

"You can cut the crap," he says, surprising me. "I know it's not fake."

I blink. "But you said-"

"I'm the _chief forensic analyst_ ," Vince reminds me incredulously. "I think I know a real fucking photograph when I see one. I know _you_ know I bullshitted my way through that. And you," he adds, smirking uncontrollably, "Frenched your sister."

I sit back in my chair, deliberating. Briefly I imagine stabbing him through his eye to silence him forever. The daydream quickly passes, though it leaves no obvious alternative in its wake. This I can probably not talk myself out of. Angel needed no persuading but Masuka is an expert, both forensically and psycho-sexually, and he's correct on all accounts.

"You told Angel you'd testify it was doctored if it came to it," I remind him finally. He shrugs.

"I did say that," he agrees. "It might take a while to write a convincing report that conclusively proves shit-all, but yeah, I said it."

"You'd testify _in court_ that Elway edited that photo?" It's my turn to be incredulous. Masuka clearly doesn't believe it, yet he'd risk being found in contempt of court? I'm sure it's a stretch, a bluff. He shrugs again.

"You've covered my silky, hairless rear on a number of occasions, and I owe the better-looking Morgan a favour for looking into Niki for me."

"I'd never want you to risk jail time for me, Vince," I say, and I mean that. Goddamn feelings!

"It's not going to come to that," he assures me. "Elway won't push Angel. This'll never see a courtroom," he says, waving the photo once. I extend a hand for it.

"It can never see any room, least of all that one out there," I say, nodding in the direction of the main office. "This has to stay between us."

"Is that what _she_ said?" he quips, unable to resist. When I only roll my eyes, he admires the picture again. "A futile expression, considering there doesn't seem to be much between you at all. Just clothing – that's unfortunate. What _did_ you say? What I wouldn't give to have been a fly on the wall..."

"Give me the photograph."

"Did you bang her? Did you get _crazy_?" He looks up at me with a daring spark of hope lighting his eyes.

I glare at him, stirred to anger. "Go fuck yourself, Vince. Of course not."

"Oh." Masuka isn't remotely offended by my nasty suggestion. He simply looks put out. "I think I'll pretend I didn't hear you say that when I reflect back on this moment in my life." He turns his attention back to the image in his hands. "At risk of seriously pissing you off, I've got to be honest and say I'm extremely honoured to have been trusted with this knowledge."

I frown. "Why would that piss me off?" After what you've already said?

"Because," he answers, "this momentous event in our friendship is going to stay with me for always, and I'm _never_ going to forget it. I feel... proud."

"Nor are you _ever_ going to bring it up again or mention it to anyone else," I warn, hoping the threat is heavily implied.

"Does that mean this is a one-time thing that we're just pretending didn't happen, or is you-and-Deb- _together_ something I'm going to have to get used to?"

"She's my sister. Nothing's changed."

"Except you kissed passionately in the dead of night and were photographed doing so," Masuka reminds me. I cover my face with my hands, suddenly exhausted.

"I don't want to talk about it," I say firmly. "Ever. Just keep it to yourself."

"For someone mysteriously adopted by a legend cop, with a hot-as sister he's hooked up with _at least_ once, a tendency to go unaccounted for hours at a time and a knack for attracting people into his life who happen to be or be killed by serial murderers, you can be so _boring_ sometimes," the analyst complains. I keep my hands over my face, struggling to keep my face passive. Is my life's pattern that obvious to others? I mean, it should be, as I laughingly pointed out to Deb last night, but until now it has seemed to not be. He goes on, oblivious to my musings. "Fine. You're no fun. I can be discreet, but you'll need to buy my silence," Masuka tells me earnestly, and I wait patiently to hear his price and for my chance to refuse. I'm quite certain it'll be something I have no interest in giving him. "I keep the photo, and you never see or hear about it again."

I drop my hands and stare at him. "Seriously?" I start to refuse, then consider it. Anything else he asks can only be worse, surely. "It never sees the light of day again?"

"I swear to use it only at night," he promises solemnly, and I cringe, revolted.

"I wish I could unhear that. And Deb _never_ finds out you've got it?" I confirm, and Vince grins.

"I'm not stupid," he says. I sigh and stand to shake his hand. His grin widens. "I just have to say this once, because I've _always_ wanted the chance to say this to you and the time has finally come: _you made out with your sister, dude_!"

After that my morning is what I expected it to be. I run tests, package and unpack various samples of evidence, print reports and search databases. Traces of my blood are found on some of the glass we collected for analysis; it is catalogued as a contamination and overlooked. Masuka shakes his head at me, still displeased with my clumsiness. Clayton questions Deb at length, longer than I thought Tom would allow, and when she finally comes out of Angel's office her expression is stony. Through my window I see Tom clap her once on the shoulder, a gesture of solidarity, and he leaves her standing alone with Clayton in the middle of the main office. I watch them all, waiting for the fallout, the unexpected arrest that I have to run out and interrupt, the handshake and apologetic glance in my direction that signals she's sold out Hannah, but none of that happens, and even when Tom has walked away and Clayton heads for the elevator Deb doesn't come running to me, so I assume she kept her cool and didn't break.

Masuka and I discover together that Oliver Saxon's blood is a near genetic match to Evelyn Vogel's, and the shock reverberates through the office as the homicide detectives start to realise that their latest case is more complex than they could possibly have suspected. We determine that Saxon is in fact Daniel Vogel and present our evidence to Batista, Miller, Quinn and Deb. Deb makes a decent show of looking surprised, looking like she did in the graveyard where I first told her all this. Quinn isn't looking at Deb. The detectives agree to look into the missing psychiatrist a little more seriously now that this link has been made clear, and disperse back to their various work stations. Quinn follows me back to my lab.

"Thanks a bunch for dropping me in it with Angel back there," he says coolly, leaning through the door to keep our conversation between us while I sit down. "Can't tell you how much I appreciate that."

His sarcasm does not go unregistered. I recognise that I am in violation of some kind of unwritten rule of brotherhood and that my time for atonement has come.

"I'm sorry, man," I answer, almost feeling it. Weird; I don't even like Quinn. "It wasn't intentional. Elway was at Deb's last night, taking pictures of her."

This doesn't really explain why I let him down, but it at least tells him how last night's events might have come up in conversation with Batista and sets him on a distracting rant about our mutual archenemy and what he'd like to do next time he encounters the private investigator. I agree with everything he says, genuinely.

"Well, is she alright?" Quinn asks finally, once he's gotten his anger out. He glances back over his shoulder into the main office. I shrug.

"She's _alright_ ," I say, "but not great. Things have been rocky. After yesterday..."

"And that epic beat-down she gave you last week," Quinn points out. "I know you guys have been fighting. I'm sure as shit that isn't the result of your casual conversation," he adds, pointing to the scratch on my arm.

"Shit's been rough," I say again. I look at my work station and start on the next task in the pile. "In other interesting news, Deb has been taking her meds. Willingly. No holding her down and shoving them down her throat necessary. But I have to take her back to the hospital today, she tore out her stitches."

"Listen to us; you'd think we share custody of a Maltese Terrier," Quinn mutters. "All I can say is, if it's a hospital visit, better you than me. I've definitely refereed my share of Deb-versus-medical-staff for the year."

I laugh, honestly amused and less than delighted by the prospect of experiencing whatever Joey experienced yesterday. At the same time, though, I detect the tenderness under his facade of disdain and annoyance, and know that if I become suddenly busy or otherwise unable to do it, he will not only agree to the hospital run but volunteer, faking reluctance the whole way. He loves her like I do, only he won't ruin her in the end like I will, so when he starts to close the door I call him back, saying, "Quinn – I don't know what she said to you last night and I know this is none of my business, but... don't give up on her. Please."

He is surprised, speechless, and even closes the door without answering. Then he opens it back up and leans back in.

"Is that code for 'keep trying'?" he asks, confused.

"I didn't think it was encoded," I answer, "but yes. Keep trying. She'll come around."

"You don't like me," he points out. I agree. "She said she doesn't want me and threatened to shoot me in the balls if I didn't get out of her house." I admit that sounds like something she would have said last night in the state she was in. "I broke up with Jamie six days ago. Batista would have my head if he saw me moving in on Deb. I'm lucky you had him distracted with whatever today." I agree that it seems quick to be moving on, and it is, but he and I both know he never stopped loving Deb, and I suggest he not be too open about that in front of Angel. Quinn is still mystified, and quite uncertain. "It kind of sounds like you're encouraging me to walk my dignity straight into a wide, obvious trap, from which I can only escape mangled and humiliated."

"I think that's exactly what I'm doing," I confess. "Trust me, I wish I wasn't. I wish she could do better than you. But she won't, she'll only do worse, and she's just starting to come out of a _really_ dark place... You wouldn't believe me if I told you how bad it's been... She's got a long way to go and it's going to be fucking hard work. It won't be pretty."

"Gee, thanks," Quinn comments. "You're really selling it, aren't you? Why would I-"

"Because she's worth it," I interrupt, silencing him. He stares at me, and I stare back at him, daring him to challenge that ultimate truth, which of course, he cannot. He nods once. He leaves.

It's weird. I've only just realised and accepted that I'm in love with Deb, and that this is why I've had such difficulty doing things _for_ her and mostly just tried to _keep_ her. My admission has brought her back to me, made her willing to be kept, willing to look forwards again after so long of looking fearfully over her shoulder. We're together and we're being honest with each other about all those things about the other we can't stand, and we're playing nicely – we're strongest this way – but though I'm loving it and though I'm determined to work to keep things like they were this morning when I woke with my Deb and my Harrison atop me, I am aware that change is a process. In wanting to change I have started to do so, but I am not yet the innocently oversweet chocolate icing Deb confuses me with. There is still poison in me. Too much of me will still hurt her if I let her have too much. A future where she is only mine is one where I eventually overstep my own abilities and fall, dragging her down with me.

Joey Quinn is better for her. I don't know that she'll go for the bait I've tentatively set for her. I don't even know if I really want her to. Part of me wants to see him humiliated in his attempts to win her back. Another part of me wants her to marry him and live happily ever after, since that particular future is obviously not going to happen with me. Either way I want her to have the option of taking back the mistake she made mid-meltdown last night in trashing her relationship with Quinn. If she's really going to choose me, which I still maintain is a terrible choice even though neither of us can define what that choice will look like, it should be a real choice – not an acceptance of what is handed to her. She shouldn't stick with me just because I said I need her to. Us being together, in whatever capacity that might turn out to be, shouldn't be about survival. Like the relationship I imagined with Hannah, I want things with Deb to be about _want_ , not purely _need_. I don't want Deb _stuck_ with me. I want her happy. I'm her brother.

And like the Grinch she claims me to be, I feel a twinge of change inside me as Joey leaves, this step of selflessness in letting myself do something _for_ Deb rather than for _me_ to keep her. Is this how normal people feel when they do stuff for those they love? Stuff that benefits them instead of yourself? I don't know. I've never felt this close to normal before. It's unsettling.

As midday nears, I happen past Angel and Deb, and she winces in pain as she gestures with her hand and pulls on the open cut on her shoulder. I stop and tell her I want to take her to get her stitches checked when we clock off for lunch. Angel is overly kind, and insists I take her now. Deb is suspicious of his behaviour and accosts me in the lift.

"What did you tell him?" she demands. I feign innocence.

"Nothing."

"Fucking liar. What did you do?"

"I did what you asked," I reply. The lift starts down. "I fixed the problem."

"Oh, God," she says, horrified. "You didn't! We agreed-"

"No one knows," I assure her, a lie, but not one that I expect to be caught up in. I trust Vince and his attachment to that picture enough to believe he will keep his silence. "I just took away Elway's leverage. He's not an issue – for now." I don't mention that eventually he could become an issue once again, and I may need to remove him more permanently from our lives. "The photo's not a part of our lives anymore, alright?"

Deb decides she doesn't want to know what I've done about Elway's leverage, for which I am glad, because I know she won't like the chance I took by showing the picture to Batista. I still have her keys (plus I'm still not really that comfortable with her in charge of a vehicle after last night) so I drive.

"What did Clayton want to ask?" I ask when we are on the road. I expect a careless response but Deb's uneasy glance away makes me frown. "What?"

"He only asked about Hannah and her arrest, like he said," she tells me, "but he was really thorough and asked a lot about our dealings with her before I arrested her. Tom kept it all short, kept cutting _me_ short or telling me to sum it up." She pauses, presses her lips together. "It was weird. Matthews really doesn't like Clayton. He was kind of... protective."

I continue to frown out the front windscreen. "What kind of stuff about 'our dealings' with Hannah?"

"How I found her bleeding out – should've left her there – how you met her, how long you two were together, how I had that accident and a few days later you turned her in. How you visited her in prison. He even brought up the fact that she escaped the same night that La Guerta died and wondered whether that bigger, closer case might have taken all our attention and explain why Hannah slipped through our fingers." She shakes her head and doesn't look at me. "Tom stopped him there. Said it was out of line." She sighs and I glance at her. Her head falls back against the headrest and she closes her eyes. "I wish he'd just give up already, but he said they've been getting tips on Hannah, don't know how since she isn't leaving my fucking house, and it's keeping him keen. He didn't say anything in particular to make me think he _knows_ anything but he's got all the pieces, Dexter. God fucking help us if we works out how to put them together."

God fucking help _him_ if he puts them together, I correct her silently, because if he does, I'll have no choice but to take him out.

"Why didn't you mention this earlier?" I ask. I tap my fingers on the steering wheel rhythmically, thinking.

"I thought it would look suspicious if I went straight to you," she says. "And I..." I look over at her and catch her looking at me already. Her eyes convey a new conflict.

"And you what?"

"And I felt... a little bit... guilty," she admits finally. I have to break our gaze to watch the road. "I thought I'd only feel worse if I talked to you. The whole time I was in that office... I kept wanting to tell him the truth."

"Which truth?" There are so many lies between us now, we really need to be specific. My massive secret – what Harry and Vogel did to me, what I've done ever since – the fact that my sister knows it, what she did for me, what we did last night... Our lives are tied together in lies and secrets. It's sad.

"I wanted to tell Tom to stop defending me because I _do_ know where Hannah McKay is, and they're fucking welcome to her."

The light ahead turns orange and I hit the brakes harder than necessary.

" _And_?" I demand, remembering the way the other two men had walked away from her with purpose in their strides, like they had places to be. Arresting Hannah, perhaps? Is that why Deb was in the office so long, striking a deal? I refuse to believe it.

"Lay off the brakes, bro, I just had this thing serviced and they work fine," she mutters, beginning a search for sunglasses. "I didn't say anything. I deserve to be in prison for everything I've done but I suppose living with the guilt of good people sticking up for me will have to be punishment enough."

I reach across and touch her wrist. She looks down at it, and then back up at me. I know she's not all fixed, nobody could be so soon after an episode like last night's, and the memory of soulless Deb is still painfully fresh, so while I hate to see her beating herself up for shit that's _my_ fault, I also feel a flicker of relief to see her eyes full of sadness instead of empty.

"I know it'll be a long time before you believe this like I do," I say carefully, "and I know my judgement doesn't hold the same weight as some other people's might to you, but you are _good_ and you _don't_ deserve guilt. You..." I can't think of how to finish that without telling her more of the same. The lights change and I put the car into gear and start moving forwards. "You aren't a killer. You aren't the bad guy. You deserve a hell of a lot better than what you got landed with."

Deb finds sunglasses and puts them on.

"I didn't kill El Sapo," she recalls. "I didn't agree to harbour Hannah. But I did burn down that church, I did keep your secret and I did shoot La Guerta." She opens the glove box. "I'd do it all again, too, a thousand times over, before I let you think I didn't love you more than my own life. So I deserve the guilt. What in fuck's this?" She shatters the beautiful-speech atmosphere by withdrawing Vogel's DVDs and USB stick from the glove box. I open my mouth to answer but she sees the name on the DVD cases. "Why do you still have these _in my car_? Can you say 'evidence', fuckface? Actually," she amends quickly, "don't tell me. I don't want to talk about this shit anymore. New topic," she orders, and tosses the stolen items back in and slams it shut. I force a smile and nod. I decide it's progress, Deb choosing to avoid painful or difficult conversations until she's in a better state to receive them.

We start talking about Astor and Cody. I engage willingly in the conversation but my thoughts are elsewhere. The mere mention of the late captain's murder is a concern for me. The deputy marshal cottoning onto our connection to the New Years' Eve double homicide at the docks could start a catastrophic chain of events for us. Of course I can never let anyone close in on us and reveal my sister's mistake to the world. I decide to do a little digging of my own when I get back to the office to see whether there's anything I can use to divert the investigator. He seems like a nice professional but I won't hesitate to destroy his reputation and his life if it'll keep mine and my family's intact.

Because Deb hates hospitals and I don't really want to deal with her moping and grumping, I drive to my new favourite drug store, recalling that it was conjoined to a very small doctors' surgery. Like the highly efficient chemists next door, these doctors leave us for only a very short wait before seeing my sister, and the female doctor who treats her takes only a few minutes to restitch and recover the shoulder cut. I am not even finished with the article I was reading in the waiting room before Deb is back out. Everything seems to be rolling smoothly, until we go to pay. The receptionist has no problem with me paying instead of Deb, but she is unhappy about Deb's total lack of identification.

"I like things done properly," the old woman sniffs when I ask what the problem is, and after that I decide I don't like this surgery. Places that do things properly are no friends of mine. Those are the kinds of places that keep records in an orderly state and can trip me up later down the track with documented facts and goddamn paper trails. Like the prison visit. I'm on their visitor registry, which is how Clayton knows I visited Hannah after I turned her in. Today's doctor visit doesn't matter, but it is another reminder in a lifetime of reminders that one can never be too careful.

I take Deb to the bank. They, also, are not happy that she is almost totally devoid of identification, except for her police badge, and say it will take at least a week, probably more, to process her request for a new bank card. Our somewhat wretched appearances assist them in willingly digesting our story about a drunken night, a blender and the contents of Deb's wallet. The bank's manager even cracks a wry smile at our explanation that tells me this isn't the first time he's heard this. It doesn't help move things along any quicker. My sister is angry about going without access to her accounts for the week that she is away and becomes rude to the bank staff so I take all the documentation she needs to fill in and drag her to the table near the front. I end up filling in a lot of it for her. She can't remember her account numbers; I can. Date of birth, address, answer to secret question – the only thing I can't do is sign at the bottom of each section, and even that I could probably pull off convincingly if needed and we weren't being closely watched by highly suspicious bank workers.

There's stuff she still needs to bring in – proof of residence, new ID when she gets it, copies of her bank statements, stuff like that – but we've done all we can today with the bank, so we go next to the transport department. It's a similar procedure there. She's given a piece of paper to say she's legally licensed to drive in case she's pulled over before her new license is sent out. Afterwards, heading back to the car, Deb is glumly quiet.

"Maybe next time you decide to have a complete psychotic breakdown you'll think about how incredibly inconvenient the aftermath can be and just save us both the trouble by _not_ ," I comment, and grin when she smacks me in the head.

I give Deb my credit card. She's not much of a spender so I'm not too concerned about her blowing out my limit, but she's hesitant about accepting. I remind her that she'll be responsible for my son for a week and I have no intention of sending my sister and son across the state without access to money, and she takes it.

"And so you can spy on us by tracking my purchases," she adds, only half-joking. Well, yeah. Vogel is still in hiding somewhere, doing and planning who-knows-what, and as it is, I know I'll be fretting the whole time I'm apart from my family. But it's still for the best. Plans have had to change due to Saxon's untimely fake kidnapping of Deb and his resultant death, but these days without Deb and Harrison will still be useful to me. I will use them to evacuate Hannah from our lives, set her free from me like she deserves – like we all deserve – and to redirect Deputy Marshal Clayton's attention from my sister and I. I will use this time to track down Vogel and, if possible and/or necessary, eliminate her. I will work out some way of getting Elway off our backs and watching his own. I will spend Saturday night with Astor and Cody, ensuring they get the least of what they deserve and get some time with their stepfather. Who adores them, actually. When Debra and Harrison return next week, all of our problems will be far away and everything we love will be near and the past will be buried and the future will be ours to do with whatever we please. I hide my smile at the thought. One week.

I promised her a new dress, new shoes and, apparently, new earrings. I am taken through shop after shop (it's really only one shop for each item, but I'm too bored to count and appreciate how reasonable my sister is actually being) while she makes her choices. The fashion boutique has seats outside the dressing rooms so I gladly sit down and use the time to log into Deb's health insurance account on my phone and apply for a new card.

My sister takes several dresses into the change room and isn't interested in my opinion on any, only stepping out to confer with the shop assistant, so I have plenty of uninterrupted time to fill in the online form. I've no sooner clicked 'apply' when my phone starts to ring. It's Hannah. I glance inconspicuously around to check for eavesdroppers before answering. The shops are almost deserted – it's lunchtime on a work day, so those who _are_ out shopping are all in the cafes and fast food outlets.

"Hey," I say into the phone, smiling. Is Hannah calling to make amends after this morning? Is she calling to say she's at an airport _right now_ , leaving Miami forever and saving me the trouble of getting her clear myself? Either would be fine. "How are you-"

"Dexter," Hannah breathes, terrified. "Dexter, they're here."

"Who's here?" I ask, fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. Her strained, soft voice alerts me that there's something to be worried about, but I suppose in my tiredness I'm too slow and confused to fully invest in worry until I have some facts.

"They're here," she whispers again, clearly petrified. There's a long pause. "They're outside. Oh, God, oh God... Debra told them, didn't she?"

" _Who_?" I ask again. When she only breathes shakily, I sit forward in my seat. It seems that there is reason to worry. Somehow I gather that she is hiding, trying to remain unheard and unseen. I lower my voice and ask, more urgently, "Hannah? _Who_ 's there?"

"Clayton and Elway." Her voice is barely audible. I stand. "They're right outside the window. Your bitch of a sister sold me out."


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. Showtime does. But those blood slide earrings and a syringe pen arrived in the mail this week so Showtime now owns one less pair of blood slide earrings and one less syringe pen. If I keep buying things from their store, maybe eventually they'll slip up and pack some of the characters of Dexter by accident. If this ever happens, I will amend my disclaimer to let you all know which character they no longer own.
> 
> Author's notes: To help update your playlist, some songs I listen to while writing this part of the story include Throw it away and Predictable by Delta Goodrem (LOVE this chick, only missed her in concert because it was the same night as Matchbox Twenty/INXS/Evermore... which was a no-brainer... and was the best concert I ever went to) and Soldier by Samantha Jade (2012 winner of Australian X-Factor). But the most evocative songs for me right now, while writing this chapter, are Downfall by Matchbox Twenty – Be my saviour, and I'll be your downfall... – and All About Us by t.A.T.u. – If they hurt you they hurt me too... it's all about us, we'll run away if we must... in you I can trust...

I should be used to this, my circumstances changing very suddenly and throwing my plans to the winds, but it never ceases to unseat me momentarily from myself. There is a suspended instant away from reality, and then it all snaps back into place and I'm all focus and purpose. Improvisation becomes my bread and butter. Facts help. So far all I know is Jacob Elway and Deputy Marshal Max Clayton are outside my sister's house and Hannah is afraid.

"What's going on?" I ask quietly. On the other end of the phone call, Hannah's frightened breaths are all I hear. At my end things seem conversely normal. The store is still practically deserted. Funky music plays softly over the speakers. The shop assistant is distracted by the arrival of a deliveryman, and she leans across her counter to flirt with him quite openly. She pays me no mind as I back slowly toward the change rooms.

"Your sister-" Hannah begins.

"No," I interrupt quietly, because I don't want my electronic voice to cause her problems where she is, and because I won't believe what she's claiming. "Deb didn't do anything. What's actually _happening_?" I have already come to the conclusion that I cannot do much to help Hannah. If the men are there to bust down the door and arrest her, I can do nothing. I am half an hour away by car, twenty minutes if I speed. Too far. The best I can do is assess the situation from where I am and offer her instructions to try to assist her escape, if need be, and I can do that best with information. "Are they coming inside?"

"They're... right outside the window. Talking. They walked right around the house." Hannah's voice is half an octave above just a breath. I am still watching the shop assistant. She laughs stupidly at something the deliveryman says, and when he begins to take her through the order and she is looking at him and not the clothing in the boxes, I slip into the only occupied dressing room.

"Dexter! Fuck!" Deb is mostly dressed except for the zip at the back, but still clutches the lace-backed green dress against herself and smacks me with her hand, exasperated by my unannounced appearance. I hurriedly shush her, pressing my finger to my lips.

"Where are you?" I ask Hannah, shifting close enough that Deb can hear the answer without having to use speakerphone. I show her the caller ID and then hold the phone between our heads. She continues to glare at me but must know by now that I usually act with reasons.

"Spare room, right underneath the window," Hannah whispers. She pauses. "They're talking."

"Who's talking?" Deb asks of me, and I tell her. Her eyes widen. "At my place? Now?" I nod. "Sons of bitches."

"Is that _her_?" Hannah's voice is so soft but her bitterness is clear.

"Who else would it be?" I ask irritably before I think better of it – there's no need to be mean to her – and Deb demands, "What are they saying?"

"You _bitch_ ," Hannah whispers miserably. "You-"

"Hannah," I interrupt, "what are they saying? Listen!"

"Me. They're looking for me. They're going to the windows and looking inside for me. One just said, 'I'm not going in there without a warrant or reasonable cause' and the other one, 'If we see McKay…'" She stops talking; at first I gather she didn't catch the rest, but then, faintly, other voices, male voices, become apparent, and I hear Clayton distantly saying, "... no way Morgan would risk that."

Elway's voice is more distinct. They are close to the window now, too close for Hannah to even risk a whisper, maybe peering through the glass, unaware that Hannah is huddled directly beneath, out of sight. "This is no normal family… fucking freaks, did you see that one with the knife? I think it was the second attachment to the email I sent you. Fucking weird."

"It was already weird before the knife. Is this the same blade? Who leaves something like this out on the beach?"

Distorted, incoherent mumbling, then, "...chased me to my car last night, probably would've killed me... no knowing what they'd do, or what else they've done. But if I do anything with these pictures, Lieutenant Batista is going to have my balls in a vice. Those two, they've got him wrapped around their little finger. No wonder they've been able to keep McKay hidden right under his nose."

"...if she's in there she probably heard us already… hiding in a cupboard or something…"

And their voices fade again.

How have things changed so drastically? Elway and Clayton were at odds this time yesterday. I made sure of that. Elway had embarrassed Clayton with his apparent lack of professionalism and sensitivity. How have they ended up teammates again in only twenty-four hours? What has changed? What have they learnt? I look at my sister. Would she...? Hannah continues reciting what she hears outside in her breathy whisper. I cover the mouthpiece so she can't hear me but we can still hear her. I round on Deb.

"What did you do?" I hiss. For a second her eyes, hazel, like my own, widen in surprise; then they narrow in understanding.

"Nothing," she hisses back. "Like I told you."

"Then why is Clayton at your house three hours after talking to you?" I can't believe I'm even asking this, but I know Deb is not as saintly and sweet as I might sometimes pretend she is. She is manipulative. She is motivated. She is intelligent. And she's a survivor. I made her that way. "Did you cut a deal? Hannah in exchange for immunity from prosecution? Might as well jump in and confess before they find her, especially if Matthews can negotiate a deal for you. After all, harbouring a fugitive, that'd look bad, huh?"

"… and the other one is saying, 'Dexter must know his own place is too obvious'," Hannah goes on, but I am only half-listening out for something of interest or usefulness while the majority of my attention is focussed here. I know Hannah's situation is serious, possibly dire for all of us, yet I am unable to prioritise it as being higher than the potential situation that may be arising between me and my sister. My darling dangerous sister, who may have changed the whole game. She stares at me, momentarily speechless, one arm still clutched across her chest to hold the green dress in place. Now, she lashes out at me with her free hand, and I sidestep to avoid the strike, and like dancers or wild animals we circle each other in the confined space.

"Fucker." Deb spits the name. "I'm not harbouring her by my own fucking choice, am I?"

"So it's a coincidence?" I shoot back, wanting her to confirm it, prove it. Her eyes track me as I keep myself opposite her. When I pass her handbag I slowly lean down and rifle through for her phone. Never taking my eyes from hers. She's proved she's not above hurting me to appease her frustrations with me. She pauses long enough for me to find the phone and straighten – she's honourable, at the end of the day – and when I'm upright she comes at me. I step back into the mirror. She follows, standing toe-to-toe with me and getting in my face.

"Don't confuse me with your whore murderess girlfriend," Deb snarls at me. "When they catch me, I'll take what I'm given. I won't be cutting deals, selling people out, playing innocent, running away. I'll go down with whatever class and grace I've got left. I'd like to think you'd do the same for me. So no, you fucking ass: I didn't tell Clayton anything. Thanks for the fucking confidence."

I feel awful immediately. I should not have even asked. Even if it's true, even if she has sold me out and given Hannah to the US Marshal Service like she wanted to, _I_ of all people should not believe it until she confesses it. The last time I assumed her guilt without her own admission was when I found her blood and gun at the crime scene of Javier Guzman, and in that case I was wrong and I only succeeded in heaping an unnecessary pile of fresh heartbreak onto her by jumping to conclusions. She said she didn't do it. Maybe she didn't. Maybe she did. Either way, I shouldn't doubt her. I angle my gaze to the pile of her clothes in her corner, and think of the torn, cut-up photo in one of her jeans pockets and the promise I wrote on the back. I'm being a jackass.

"You're right, I'm sorry," I say quickly. I mean it. She must recognise that, because she takes a step back and glares at me from there. I can see she's still feeling hurt. "I trust you."

Hannah is still talking. She has noticed my prolonged silence.

"Dexter?" she asks fearfully. "Are you still there?"

"I'm listening," I reassure her, uncovering the mouthpiece for a moment. I keep my eyes on my sister. "Tell me what they're saying now."

"They're talking about photos, a knife, a file… _Files_ ," Hannah corrects herself, emphasising the 's'. "Case files… Files from Miami Metro, from Detective someone… Signed them over this morning… Patterns… Dr Vogel…" She is silent while she concentrates on the conversation outside the window. "One just said, 'They weave a good story but I'm telling you, Dexter came out the back of that house and walked back in with the paramedics watching. That means… they were _both_ inside when the gunfight went down'." Hannah is silent again. The hurt starts to fade from Deb's face and is slowly replaced by dread. I feel something similar. "'Matthews was definitely blocking me today, either he knows something or he doesn't want to know'. Please tell me what's happened, Dexter. They're not talking about me at all anymore. They're talking about _you_."

I already gathered that much. Elway's vendetta and Clayton's job have found a way to align themselves after a long, shaky start. It's finally occurred to them that they were right all along – Elway's odd and mismatched puzzle pieces and Clayton's are actually from the same jigsaw. And what a jigsaw it is. Hannah. Elway's photograph. The knife I left buried in the sand last night. Stupid exhausted mistake. At least they'll only find my blood on it, and Deb's fingerprints. Dr Vogel's disappearance, the gunfight, my hasty exit and re-arrival at the doctor's home. While at first the frustration of looking at the pieces upside down and mixed-up made collaboration difficult, my enemies are now piecing things together. I can't say I'm happy about it, but hopefully it all looks so crazily expansive and disconnected that it remains too confusing for either of them to actually make enough sense of it to come to any conclusions.

"We're fucked this time," Deb comments, dropping her arm. The dress stays in place, hanging from her shoulders. "They're going to find her in there. They're going to come get me. I'm going to fucking prison."

"No." If I can do _anything_ in my power to prevent it, Deb will never spend a single night in lockup. Regardless of whether she's brought this on herself by spilling to Clayton this morning or even just by slipping up and sharing a detail that tipped him off, she's still my sister. "You aren't."

"Excuse the fuck out of me for not being too quick to jump on your optimism train, bro," she snaps. "There's a fucking deputy marshal on my _doorstep_ again, the same deputy marshal who apparently didn't buy a word of my fucking performance this morning, and once they've got Hannah the next obvious step is to come arrest the dumbass who kept her – fucking me, that's who." She runs her hands through her hair. Control is slippery for my sister. It never stays too long. The descent back to last night's desolation and despair is not off the cards. "This is it. Hannah's a fucking goner and I'm next. Shit, God-fucking shit..."

"No one's arresting you," I tell Deb, but Hannah has heard Deb's proclamation and her next whispered words are high with panic: "Dexter? What should I do? Please come help me."

"You're fine," I say to Hannah. "They said they weren't coming in without a warrant. Breaking in to search the place and finding you will make their arrest shaky – a good defence lawyer could get that thrown out of court and you'd walk free. They won't risk that. Just sit tight. They'll go away."

But Hannah is still afraid. "I don't think so. What if they stay here all day? How far away are you? When will you be here?"

"I'm-"

I start to speak but I'm cut off by my sister. She snaps out her hand, catching mine, and slams it back into the mirror, her palm covering the mouthpiece. Hannah's voice is muffled by her hand. I don't pull away.

"You can't help her," Deb says adamantly. I'm surprised by the flash of terror in her eyes. "Don't you dare leave me to go help her."

I never like to see her afraid. I open my free arm to her and she automatically steps in close. I wrap my arm across her back; my hand settles on the skin of her back, under the open edge of the unzipped dress. Her eyes stay on mine as she presses against me and she draws near and I wonder if she is going to kiss me. Boundaries are much easier to cross the second time. One hand over my phone, pressing mine into the mirror behind me, one hand on my breastbone, she pauses with her lips millimetres from mine.

"Don't leave," she whispers, half an order, half a plea. "I'm your sister. You're meant to look after me."

I'm struck by the memory of her first day at school. She's right, she's my responsibility, now as much as way back then. I curl my fingers around my phone to cover some of hers. Holding her hand. Holding her in the present. Keeping her safe.

"I'm here," I whisper back. Relief floods her face. A faint smile makes an attempt at being seen. "I'm not leaving you." Deb turns her head to slide her chin onto my shoulder. Where it belongs. Spread across her back, I feel the brittle scabs of yesterday's smaller cuts under my fingers. "I'm staying here, with you."

"Not here," Deb murmurs into my ear, running her hand up to my shoulder. In her other hand and mine, Hannah's fearful, softly rasping questions go unheeded and mostly unheard. "We've got to get out of here. Fix this. Save ourselves."

"Hannah's twenty minutes away at best," I remind her, misinterpreting. Deb shakes her head against mine, her hair swishing over her shoulders.

"Twenty minutes better spent driving in the opposite direction," she says. "We can run."

It's not something I ever expected to hear my sister suggest, so I pull aside to try to look at her. She doesn't look at me. She sticks to me and stares at herself in the mirror behind me.

"We can drive straight to the school," she goes on, voice unusually breathy. Wild. "Grab Harrison. Stop into your place. Grab whatever. Go. Just _drive_. Get the fuck out of Dodge. We could go anywhere."

I'm floored. I move my hand from her back up to the nape of her neck, careful of the strapping and padding on her shoulder; sliding my fingers around to her jawbone, I gain enough traction and control to gently pull her away from me. She comes away only reluctantly. I want to look her in the eyes and confirm that she knows what she's saying. It's insane, beyond crazy. Run away? It's occurred to me plenty of times, between my lifelong contingency plan, my foolish Argentina and Cuba plans with Hannah, even in the past weeks to simply bolt from sudden problems and take Deb with me, and I've even suggested it to her as recently as yesterday. But for real? Now? I'm not discounting the probability that my life will eventually come to exactly this one day, but this feels too soon, too unexpected. It's happening too fast. I shake my head. Of course I'm being stupid, naive. When did I _think_ I'd need to run away? At some convenient point in the future that suits me? But how much more 'convenient' can I possibly ask for? My enemies are distracted, allowing a rare window of opportunity and time, and my sister is _willing_ to go. Like this is ever going to happen again. Still, I'm unsure. This wild suggestion is so un-Deb. That scares me.

Deb slides her arm behind me, across the back of my shoulders. Our chests pressed firmly against one another, I'm sure I feel her pounding heartbeat vibrating my own ribs. Our foreheads touch and her short breaths warm my face. Her eyes are slanted down, not making contact. The intimacy of being so close is intoxicating; I know that nothing else matters but right now, right here. She may have betrayed me to Clayton, I don't know, but I couldn't care less. I still trust her like no one else. The air of the dressing room is charged by her fear of losing me and my desire to have her near when I am uncertain. Like always, she can change that last part.

"Harrison and I, we'd be with you. You'd have everything you need," Deb says finally, and I can't argue with that. It's like I told Dr Vogel. The decision is immediately cemented in my mind. The voice in our hands doesn't matter at all suddenly. Hannah's wrath at being abandoned and betrayed, the unravelling of my long list of crimes and the resultant hunt... none of that can matter if we're gone. I'd have everything. I nod.

"Alright," I agree quietly. I drop my hand from her neck and start to step past her, prepared to let her get redressed and leave with her _right now_ to disappear and start our new life somewhere, wherever. Anywhere. She loosens her arm around my shoulders and finally looks up at me. I freeze at what I see. Last time I saw him in there, I passed it off as imaginary, but now I am sure I see my brother in the sparkling hazel of my sister's eyes. I grab her chin to hold her still and closely inspect her eyes. She blinks in surprise at my behaviour. The irises are clear and exactly as I expect to find them. Deb, only Deb. But I know what I saw.

"What?" she asks, worriedly. I can only shake my head in response. I don't know what to say. Of course I don't believe in anything as ridiculous as spirits or possession, but I do believe in psychological symbolism, and I know enough about my own psyche to know that when I visualise Brian Moser I am seeing my own darkness. I am mortified to spy it slithering behind my sister's righteousness, poisoning her with narrow-minded panic and merciless self-preservation. _My_ Deb would never run. Didn't she just say so? She would face her problems head-on. My Deb fixes things, doesn't hightail it in the opposite direction. She finds ways. She would find a way around this, too. She never chooses the easy path; she does what's right. My Deb saved Hannah's life when it would have suited her better to let her die. My Deb would never suggest uprooting Harrison's life to protect or improve her own, like Hannah did. She doesn't want her nephew living out of a suitcase and sleeping in random lumpy hostel beds and missing school for untold lengths of time while we relocate endlessly, trying to stay hidden. Fugitives. Criminals.

So I know I'm not hearing from Debra at all, but from the darkness that has most certainly, most disappointingly, taken up residence inside her, and _that_ version of Deb is the minority – she will be gone again soon and _my_ Deb will be back, waking each morning in grimy backwater hostels with accusation in her eyes, pretending to be happy with what we're doing because she was the one who suggested it but silently demanding how I could let things come to this.

How I could let her turn into _me_ when she should only ever be herself.

"No," I say eventually, releasing her face. I disentangle my fingers from hers and bring the phone to my ear, ignoring Hannah's incessant terrified whispering. Deb stares at me as I tell Hannah, "I'm still here. Everything's fine. I'm too far away to come – I'd be half an hour away – but we're going to draw them away. Sit tight and just listen to them in case they say anything useful."

Hannah thanks me, whispers about how scared she is, begs to know what's happening here, whispers about something else, but I'm not listening. I cover the mouthpiece again and speak instead to my sister.

"We're not running," I tell her. "I'd have everything I need but you wouldn't. Your job, your purpose, your friends, your self-worth – you'd have to leave too much behind and neither of us would ever forgive me. You wouldn't be _you_ if you lost all that." I loop one arm around her neck and clutch her close in a rough hug. Into her ear I whisper, "Don't change, Deb."

She doesn't answer, but I'm sure she understands and knows I'm right. She hugs me tightly and I feel her nose and tight-shut eyelids against my neck. I wish I could see into that head; right now I'm sure she's fighting off the selfishness she learnt from me and remembering who _she_ is. When I'm spiralling out of control and I cling to her I find my way back; is she doing the same? I don't allow her much time to do so because I hear the clip-clop of the shop assistant's shoes and her voice, suspiciously asking if everything is okay. She's noticed my absence, heard our voices. I forcibly spin Deb around, wedge my phone between my shoulder and ear, hide hers in my pocket and, just as the assistant nervously opens the curtain, I grab the zipper on the back of the green dress.

"Oh," the assistant verbalises, surprised to find her suspicions confirmed by me being inside the dressing room but also by the lack of inappropriate behaviour. I tug on the zip as though that was all I was doing in here and pretend like it's difficult, telling Hannah, "He says investing it all in stocks would be the way to go but after what happened to Jim I'm just not sure... Just a sec," though she has no idea what I'm talking about. I gesture the assistant over. I say, in an aside to her, "I think it's stuck."

"I'm sorry," the shop girl says, flashing Deb an apologetic smile in the mirror, taking over from me. "I forgot what you said about your arm. It's going to really suck for you with zips until that heals, huh?"

I retreat to the middle of the store. There are still no other shoppers in here and the deliveryman has gone.

"Awkward situation," I say to Hannah as explanation. I take out Deb's phone and start dialling. "What's the deal where you are?"

"Same," she whispers. "They've walked away a little but I can still hear them. What's happened? Why are they more interested in you than me?"

"No idea. Just hold on again." I lower my phone and raise Deb's as it starts to ring. It connects quickly to the crime watch hotline. I fake an accent and report a sighting of a blonde woman, who looks strikingly similar to that Hannah McKay lady, on foot about five blocks from my address. I give a false name and hang up. I know it won't take long for that report to reach the deputy marshal, and then he'll head over to my side of town. Ideally I'd like to send Clayton off looking for his charge miles away, but he's got me in his sights and this'll sound convincing to him.

Hannah continues to recite the men's conversation to me. It sounds to be going in circles; they don't have enough puzzle pieces between them to understand what it all means, and it's driving them crazy. Deb comes out with the shop assistant and I pay for the dress she's picked without looking at the price. I stay on the phone with Hannah for about four more minutes, trailing after my sister through the shops and back to the car, carrying all the bags like a good brother, before Hannah announces the men are leaving.

"One just got a phone call," she whispers. She listens. "He says... There's been a tip to the hotline... Shit, Dexter, the other one just said that's near your place! What's happening?" She pauses again. "They're leaving," she notes, surprised. "They're going to check out that tip."

"Everything's under control," I assure her. "When you're sure they're gone, pack your bag and start wiping down the house, anything that might have your prints, like I showed you. I'll get you out of there tonight, alright?"

Deb nudges me, frowning. "Tonight? And put her _where_?" I can only shrug. I have no idea. But Deb's place is no longer the best place for her. I wish now I'd never had the stupid thought to bring her there in the first place.

"This is bad, isn't it?" Hannah asks. "Just tell me what's going on. What are you going to do?"

"Don't worry about anything," I insist. "I'll see you tonight after I get back from work. I'll handle everything."

I hang up on her even as she tries to wrest more information out of me. I switch the mobile onto silent mode and throw both phones into Deb's handbag so I can ignore Hannah's return calls.

"I'm glad I'm your sister and not your girlfriend," Deb comments, "because you tell me jack-shit and it turns out she gets even less out of you than I do."

Deb decides she doesn't want to know how I plan to 'handle' the situation we're in. We return to work and go back to our respective stations. I continue processing evidence and collating data, running on autopilot while I contemplate the numerous fragments of information my enemies seem to have collected. I have to assume that whatever Elway knows he has shared with Clayton, including the photographs he took last night. They know I have an inappropriate and insanely fucked-up relationship with my sister. They have a knife from my sister's property, but it's only got my blood on it. They know I have been in a relationship with Hannah McKay and they _suspect_ I'm helping her. Elway _claims_ to have seen me leaving the scene of a crime but no other testimony lines up with his claim. They _think_ Deputy Chief Matthews was covering for Deb in the interview this morning, but he knows nothing and there's no crime in being short with someone. There's nothing to charge us with. I decide my sister and I are safe for now. I go on working.

I get texts throughout the day from Hannah, varying between panicky and desperate at first and then angry at the opposite end of the spectrum. The general theme of them is that I am not telling her anything, she feels scared and defenceless, I am not taking care of her, I am being selfish, and what am I going to do about all this? I only answer sparingly, and admittedly my responses are unhelpful and vague. The men haven't returned to Deb's, so what's she worried about? I don't know what she expects from me. An hour-long phone conversation to explain every little detail? A thesis of a text message? There's nothing to worry about anymore. It's been taken care of. I'll move you elsewhere tonight if you still want me to. My responses are straightforward and provide all the information she really needs. Eventually she stops texting.

It's very late in the afternoon before my tired brain remembers the other, forgotten element of Elway and Clayton's conversation.

I head down to the records department and find it closed up, the temporary staff member working this shift having already packed up and gone home for the day. I sneak inside.

"Files," I mutter, checking the records of who has signed out what today. Most of today's borrowings have been innocent enough, until my attention is caught on a name: Robbins, John. Hmm. Elway's friend. I run my finger across to see what he has signed out. "Shit."

I sneak back out, pulse racing, and amble back to the lift. I chat with someone I'm meant to know, although I couldn't give a toss who he is, and smile as I exit the elevator on my own level. I wave at Miller as she passes me on her way out. I seem totally normal, but I'm far from it. Emotional responses bombard me. I spot my sister at her desk, where she is deep in conversation with Batista over a piece of paper.

"... that's a fuckload of phone calls for someone who didn't know anything," he is saying, concernedly. Neither of them notices my approach. Deb shrugs and pushes the paper away from herself.

"I don't know what to tell you," she replies. "Obviously he can't have known what was going on. He was here, then he was picking up Harrison, he was at the doctors', he went home and Jamie came over, he called you... And then he came straight to Vogel's. Neither of us had any fucking clue she was keeping Oliver fucking Saxon in her upstairs bedroom, nor that he was actually her godforsaken _son_ – it's not something she ever mentioned in my sessions."

Angel notices me and waves me over. I smile but I'm suspicious of everyone right now. My enemies are canvassing Deb's house. Robbins has signed over some potentially damaging information to Jacob Elway. Angel is clearly asking Deb about me. I don't like any of it.

"Yesterday," the lieutenant says, turning fully to me. Deb glances up at me meaningfully. "The shit that went down at Vogel's, and before that. Honestly, how did you know something was up?"

"The picture," I remind him. He quirks an eyebrow worriedly, thinking of today's picture, and quickly tries to cover his expression, remembering that he isn't meant to be letting on that he saw. I elaborate, "The dead girl. It kind of freaked me out. And it came from Deb's phone."

"Right," he agrees, and shows me the print-out he has. "You were worried. So you made seventy-six phone calls to her number yesterday."

Seventy-six, huh? The typed print confirms this, and I'm sure my phone's stored call memory could, too. I recall myself sitting on Harrison's bed, dialling Deb's phone over and over and hanging up on her voicemail. I tell Angel a version of this, that I was bored and worried and not paying attention to how many times I called while I waited for Jamie.

"Oliver Saxon used to date your neighbour," Angel comments now. "He knew who you were, even if he only met you once or twice. We know Vanessa Huxley," I vaguely recognise this as the dead prostitute's name, "looks at least slightly similar to Deb," to which my sister snaps, "She does not!" Angel ignores her interjection and continues, "and Dr Vogel took Deb's phone from here, Saxon killed Huxley and one of them photographed her and sent the picture _from_ that phone to yours... It's all over the place and I can't for the life of me work out how it all fits together, but I can't stop thinking that Saxon was _targeting_ you both. Like there's a message one of you is meant to understand." He examines me with his compassionate, keen gaze. "Dexter, is there anything else? Anything that could connect these dots? If there was a threat made, or anything like that, that made you so worried about Deb, tell me so I can get to putting this case in the 'closed' basket."

I pretend to consider this helplessly. Deb watches me critically. Her friendship with Angel is sacred to her; she hates to lie to him, hates to have to tiptoe around him. I admit I don't enjoy it either. He's a good person, maybe the best adult I know after Debra herself. He cares about us. I decide I prefer it when he thinks I'm helpful.

"Last time I saw Evelyn," I say now, "she was really odd. I didn't stay long. I dropped in to see her and she was all moody. Happy and hopeful one minute, angry the next. Demanding."

"Demanding _how_?" Angel asks. I act like I'm struggling to explain, while really I'm just thinking of a viable answer.

"She wanted me to housesit for her," I lie finally. "She said she had some business upstate, some consulting, and wanted me to watch her house. She wanted me to stay there. It's only two nights and I said I couldn't, I'd be between mine and watching Deb's place while she's away. She was really angry about that. She said something awful about me being unreliable like my father and I stormed out." I shrug again. "Then a week later I can't get hold of Deb, you tell me she's gone to Vogel's and I get that picture. I didn't know what to think. I didn't think Evelyn would _shoot_ Deb. I didn't think she was Saxon's _mother_."

"She was worried about Saxon, too, I bet," Angel says now, jumping on my information with enthusiasm. "That's why she wanted her place watched while she went out of town. She knew he was around, she was scared. Now he's dead and she's run off... maybe she's going about normal business? Tell me where she was going."

I recite the dull details of Vogel's job upstate and Batista copies them down. Maybe they can find her for me, save me the effort.

"I knew there was something missing, that you could tell me," he says with a smile. "Instinct." He gestures to Deb's desk and says to her, "Pack this shit up. Go home and get ready for your trip. Hopefully we'll have this case done and dusted by the time you get back."

We both beam after Angel, the picture of innocence, and I begin to help Deb clear the files off her desk. When he locks himself into his office and no one else is within earshot, I lean close to Deb under the pretence of piling some folders up.

"We have another big problem," I murmur.

I drive us several blocks away and then pull over. In the car I wearily explain to an equally weary Debra what I've just discovered.

"So... _you_ have a big problem," she corrects before I am finished. "I could just drag your ass back to Angel and say I've caught the real Bay Harbour Butcher, get my word in before Elway does and get away scot-free?"

"You've always been able to do that," I remind her, and she looks away. Bluff called. "But he's also got-"

"La Guerta. Fuck." Deb laughs humourlessly and shakes her head in disbelief. "So he's got everything he needs to catch and charge us both. He's got the case files for," she ticks off her fingers as she says, "Bay Harbour Butcher, Ice Truck Killer, Trinity, Speltzer and La Guerta. The complete DVD box set. Fan-fucking-tastic. You bring the popcorn."

"Robbins must have signed those files out to Elway this morning when he was in," I muse. I add antagonising this Robbins to my list of things to do when I am no longer on damage control.

"What I don't get," Deb brings up, "is how he worked out to grab those particular cases? ESP? I mean," she emphasises, "I'm a fucking detective and I fucking _lived_ with you, and _I_ didn't know, so how has he just worked it all out? What kind of search criteria does someone use to get those results? Just type in 'high-profile killers and police captains secretly killed by Morgan family'?"

"These are all cases where either you or I was listed as a victim or person of interest, but which we also worked," I recall. "You and I were on the Ice Truck Killer's case when Brian Moser kidnapped you; Arthur Mitchell murdered my wife and you were on the team looking for him; you investigated Speltzer and I did the forensics for his kills, but he also attacked you; we were both picked by Lundy to help look for the Butcher and I was under protection from Doakes when he died."

"And you were a person of interest initially for La Guerta," Deb remembers softly. It was only a passing suggestion at the office, a sensible concern considering I was arrested and seemingly harassed by the victim in the days before her demise, but it was quickly dismissed. Upon returning from the clean-up of that particular murder with my shell-shocked sister, I ensured we featured in numerous photos at Angel's New Years' party and I joined many conversations with the merriest and most respectable patrons, who would all vehemently attest that they spoke to me but couldn't reliably determine at which time. The crime scene also looked quite convincing, by the time I was done with it, and it really didn't seem as though there was any better explanation than how it looked – like two people had shot one another and died quickly from their injuries. In the shock of the moment it didn't seem improper for me to handle the crime scene with Masuka, although really, in terms of impartiality and forensic validity, I should not have been anywhere near that scene. Deb finishes reminiscing before I do and says, "We should have bolted for the hills that night, not hung around all this time to let it all catch up with us."

I ignore that. What might be more logical may not be the more right, and leaving would have only proven our guilt and made a normal future impossible for my family. She knows this. She's just scared.

"All cases where we were personally involved, even on-scene to witness things going down, and also professionally involved, able to tweak the outcome from the inside," I determine. "Cases where we might have gotten away with something. Like yesterday. Elway knew we were inside the house to witness the shooting but that we were also getting to handle the case and we'd be able to portray it the way we liked. He's looking for evidence we've done it before. He thinks it's our pattern."

"It _is_ the pattern," Deb rebukes. " _Your_ pattern. But why should that interest him? He's only ever in it for the buck. Handing in Hannah McKay is where the money's at, and hunting us is something of a diversion from that task."

I disagree that Elway's only motivation is money. I know that he also wanted Deb and is angry to have been rejected, and more deeply infuriated by our successful efforts to undermine, discredit and embarrass him. There is now a personal element to his vendetta. I only hope that the desire to catch Hannah and get rich outweighs the desire to see Deb and me under his foot.

"Maybe the same way filming us last night struck him as a reasonable way to spend his time," I suggest finally. "He's curious, and sure there's something up about us that he can use as leverage to get Hannah."

"I wish she were more likeable, Dexter," Deb complains now. "Then I wouldn't feel so lousy about risking my life and freedom to help her." She groans and sits forward to fold her arms across the dash and rests her head on them. "Whatever Elway knows, Clayton knows, right?"

"We should assume so. He had definitely changed his tune between yesterday and this morning when he spoke to you."

"And he works for the Federal Marshal Service, and his entire investigation is their property, and judging from the way he conducts himself he probably records his investigation fucking meticulously. So the fact that he's changed focus to look for Hannah through us is probably already typed neatly into his latest report. On his government-issue laptop. Which the Service can probably access remotely, if our current luck is anything to go by."

"You're verging on paranoid with that last part, but the rest, yes, probably," I concur. I am silent while I let these implications sink in. Yes, Clayton will probably record this change in focus and provide reasons. That means that even if he finds nothing, the reports will always exist that show he had grounds to investigate us, and that means at any point in the future someone else could stumble across or decide to reopen that investigation. It also means that if he sends in that report to a supervisor and he dies (just say I killed him...) soon after, his replacement on the Hannah McKay case would have those same notes and would most likely look straight to me and just continue the same investigation, but with more intensity. The most obvious implication, though, is the risk that Clayton will connect all the dots and arrest Deb and me, and our involvement in hiding Hannah will feel like a slap on the wrist beside the punishments for all our other crimes. Like the electric chair. I exhale loudly, a frustrated sigh. Paper trails are my true nemesis.

"This whole thing fucking _sucks_ ," Deb mumbles into her arms. "When did this become my life?" She turns her head to the side to look at me when I reach over and rest an apologetic, comforting hand on her shoulder. "Are you going to kill them?"

"I can't let Clayton file that report," I tell her. The look of resignation on her face almost physically hurts me. I don't want her to accept it. I don't want her to be okay with this, not ever. I tried bringing her around to my perspective after she caught me in the church – I almost destroyed everything I love about her in the process, and even now, a year later, she's still a mess. She should never just accept what I do. She should challenge me to be better. "I don't _want_ to kill him. A deputy marshal disappearing while investigating me leaves too many questions I don't feel comfortable answering. All I need," I explain now, squeezing her shoulder encouragingly, "is access to his notes. If I wipe his computer and confiscate the case files, there's nothing for him to go on."

Deb frowns at me, disbelieving. "You'd be happy to do it that way? _Not_ kill him?"

"I'm not happy about any of this," I admit, "but Clayton and Elway dead or missing the day after they both accused us of being party to a murder... We got away with it with La Guerta, and it's possible that could happen again, but the odds aren't in our favour." I fidget with the ends of her hair, spilling over her shoulder. "The safest and most logical option is to remove their access to the information that could screw us over, destroy Clayton's notes and records and set him on a new path. I need to find out where he's staying."

I dig out my phone and connect to the internet. Deb sits up straight.

"You're _definitely_ not going to kill him?"

"Not if I can help it. I need to get to him fast, though, to prevent him changing from a potential threat to an informed threat. If he has the case files and I have to take them, I'll make it look like a random break-in. He can't report them missing – he isn't meant to have them, because Robbins should never have given them to Elway. How do I find out where he is?" I demand of no one in particular, when my phone loads Google and my brain draws a blank. Deb opens her car door and I automatically snap out a hand to grab her arm and still her. "Where are you going?"

"Swap seats. I'll drive," she says. I shake my head.

"You're lucky I'm still letting you drive my son to Orlando tomorrow," I reply sourly, "and that's only if you take your meds and get some decent sleep tonight. About fourteen hours should do it. Otherwise you're taking a bus. Don't argue," I warn when she starts to. "You're a wreck. You're not driving." I frown at her. "You keep trying to run away, among other crazy shit."

"Shit's all fucked up," she reminds me irritably. But I know she sees what I'm saying. She's been walking a delicate line between sane and insane. Twice before in her life she's fallen over it, and the result has been pretty catastrophic. Last night she lost her whole sense of self and later asked me to kill her. The time before that she plunged us both and a car into a lake and almost drowned me. I have every right to be nervous about her taking the wheel, even with physical and mental exhaustion aside.

"When is it not?" I reply finally.

She slams her door shut, frustrated with me. "I know where he's staying."

It turns out Clayton mentioned the motel this morning during the interview, encouraging Deb to drop by if she thought of anything else she wanted to tell him. I experience no luck whatsoever in trying to convince her to let me go alone. We drive first to my place, where Jamie and Harrison are taking selfies with her phone, and after a few minutes of cuddles and conversation I duck into my bedroom to get a few supplies. Deb keeps Jamie engaged. They are civil to each other, even friendly if not overly warm, and I overhear Jamie comment that she will miss Harrison for the week he is away. I dig out a syringe of M99 and a small torch and slide my trunk back into the closet. I walk back out and Deb is just agreeing to Jamie's request to take Harrison for the night.

"Beef burrito night at Angel's, and we're borrowing out _Toy Story 3_. Angel always suggests having Harrison over when he wants to watch a little kid film; he doesn't want anyone to know he actually wants to see it, and my niece is too old and too cool to watch movies with her dad now," Jamie explains with a smile, while Harrison races off to pack a bag. I couldn't have planned things better myself, except maybe to have Deb go with them as well. Deb sets about getting things out of the freezer and cupboards as though we'll be making and eating dinner here, and Jamie wishes her a safe trip on her way out. They smile at each other. I'm glad. Harrison waves at us. I watch him go, immensely glad I didn't listen to Deb's crazy alter-ego and upend his happy little life by running from Miami.

As soon as Jamie's car leaves the parking lot, we put everything back. We have shit to do, and dinner isn't first on the list.

I decide we'll take my car, so I graciously return Deb's keys to her. If the vehicle is spotted, I'd rather it be me implicated than her. Deb calls Clayton and requests he meet her. She gives a location that is very distant from his motel. The meeting time is not for an hour but he'll need to leave shortly to be there on time. He is surprised but intrigued. He agrees and mentions, offhand, that he received a tip-off that Hannah McKay was sighted near my place today. He adds he found nothing, fishing for information, hoping Deb will just confess over the phone to everything she knows, perhaps, but she says, "See you in an hour," and hangs up. I drive to the address Deb has provided and park in the next, darkening street over. I hand over a pair of latex gloves and she pulls hers on.

"You really won't stay in the car?" I ask, and the look I get as she climbs out of the passenger seat is answer enough. I sigh and follow suit. I don't want her at risk but I know she'll be useful. She's capable and I trust her. By this point I've totally forgotten this afternoon's momentary suspicion of her loyalty and motives and once again she is my most trusted person in the world. Hannah's claim seems far-fetched now, but I think even if it turns out Debra _has_ betrayed me, I'll still believe most anything she tells me and I know I'll always have faith in her. "At least tie your hair back. Keep your DNA off the floor."

We walk together to the small grey building of cheap apartment-style short stay rooms. This is an industrial area and there are few residences, and therefore very few people around at all by this time of evening. We wait in the shadow of a neighbouring building until we see Max Clayton come out and drive off. I am convinced that he is too organised to have forgotten anything, and by this point, dropping back home for anything will delay him enough to make him late. Clayton doesn't strike me as a late- or missed-appointment kind of guy. We take the concrete steps slowly and softly to avoid making noise, but it seems this building is mostly uninhabited at the moment. Of eight apartments, only three show signs of being used recently, like shoes outside the door or lights on inside. We reach the third storey and check for possible observers. The other rooms on this level are abandoned, either unleased or temporarily vacated for dinnertime. There are no cameras – one of the first things I noticed. I pick the lock while Debra keeps a look out and then the door creaks open and we both slip inside.

"Not how I expected," Deb notes when I switch on my torch. The building is dull and cheap but Clayton has made it his temporary home, and what a strangely inviting home it is. The couch has a hand-knitted blanket cast neatly over the back, clearly a personal touch, and the side table is topped by a silver tray with a crystal decanter of something undoubtedly classy and two little tumblers. A tidy pile of hardback novels as high as the arm of the sofa show a taste for serious classic literature. I imagine him bringing these little luxuries and reminders of home with him everywhere in his suitcase, unpacking them into new characterless spaces to bring his workspaces to life and provide and comforting sanctuary at the end of each day away from what he knows and loves.

The dining table is totally clear – I expected a workstation, but Clayton is too tidy to misuse his place of dining as a place of work. I lead the way through the dingy apartment, noting the deputy marshal's attempts at making it more personal and appealing. The first room is a bedroom, and the second would be too, with its single bed, except that across the floor, piles of reports, photographs, newspaper clippings, print-outs and even a copy of Sal Price's book on Wayne Randall are all perfectly stacked and evenly spaced, organised like you wouldn't believe. Without proper lighting I cannot tell what his system is, but I am sure there is one. On the otherwise empty, tightly-made, flat bed, there are three familiar cardboard boxes. The other two cases do not seem to be present. I gather Elway is holding onto those and examining them himself to get through the information quicker. How very inconvenient for me that they would be so efficient. Now I need to break into another residence.

"Which ones are here?" I ask Deb quietly as we carefully step over the paperwork and check the labelling of each box. My sister uses the torch on her phone to read by. I say, "I've got Speltzer here..." Piece of shit he was. I angle my torchlight towards the next box. "Trinity." Even deeper feelings of hatred bubble away inside me. I work to contain them. Emotions come to me with more ease each time. I am handling it, but I wonder for how long I will be able to. Is this how normal people live their lives? Just a constant rollercoaster ride of feelings? How unsettling it must be to be normal. I am still intrigued by Deb's belief that 'normal' is exactly what I am, deep inside, underneath the trauma and damage, but I must admit that the notion of allowing myself to become that is daunting.

"Brian Moser." Deb drops the lid of the box back down. Her voice is flat and deliberately unfeeling. I realise we are doing exactly the same thing right now – acknowledging feelings that are too big to feel, stashing them away and acting like they aren't there. My thoughts flash on my dead brother and the spark of all he represents that I saw in my sister. I shove those thoughts away. "The Ice Truck Killer." She turns her phone's light on the floor. "Despite the work he's gone to making this easy for us, I still think it'll take a while to dig through all this and find what you want to make disappear."

"His report. It's probably on his laptop, wherever that is," I say. Her phone rings. "Put that shit on silent, will you? This is meant to be a stealth operation."

She ignores me. "It's Clayton." She answers it, and switches on loudspeaker so I can listen in. "Deputy Marshal?"

"Detective, I just need to confirm," the marshal's voice replies, crisply, "that you meant the Oriental Garden Restaurant on Williams Avenue?"

"That's what I said," Deb agrees. She glances up at me. "Are you still coming?"

"I'm on my way over. Are _you_ still coming?" he shoots back, and I know something's up. "You said you needed to talk but I just got word you're out and about with your brother."

Fucking Elway. Deb mouths a few choice words, then says, "I took my brother's car. Who the fuck said that? Are you talking to Jacob fucking Elway? Is he watching me again?"

"It doesn't matter," Clayton says smoothly, apparently appeased. "I'll talk to you more when I see you. Catch you in about forty-five?"

"See you then," Deb responds, and ends the call. She obediently changes the volume to vibrate, then lets loose. "Fuck! Fucking cock-fuck! Elway is such a fucking _pain_ in my _ass_. He saw us leave your place! Where does this motherfucker hide, seriously, that we never fucking _spot_ him?" She folds her arms, fuming. "When you get around to not-killing him and not telling me about it, please, feel free to break his fucking legs. And arms. And anything else you can reach. Ugh, he shits me to fucking tears!"

"Clayton's faith in you sounds a little shaky," I comment, shining my torch on the nearest pile of paper. I'm annoyed with this apparent backfiring of an otherwise smooth improvisation. The tip this afternoon did the job of redirecting both men but also convinced Elway that Hannah was staying at _my_ place, so now he's staking it out. "We mightn't have as long as we thought. When he gets to that restaurant and finds you not there-"

"Dex!"

My sister's voice rises in warning and she reaches to her side for her firearm – which, of course, she doesn't have back from Angel yet – as a hand closes on my shoulder and a sharp knife blade presses on the skin of my throat.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. Or The F Word, though having used it here in these twenty-four chapters more times than I think I've ever before seen it in print, perhaps I should look into who does.

The knife's edge is cold on my skin for only a second. My blood boils and instinct drives me – I know automatically from the angle of the knife that the attacker is shorter than me and act accordingly. I grab the hand on my shoulder to keep my assailant still and swing my elbow back to hook my arm over theirs. I catch the wrist and twist mercilessly. The knife comes away and drops to the floor; the wrist breaks, or at least fractures, in my grasp. That was expected. What isn't expected is the girlish shriek of shock and pain. I release the hand and spin to shine my torch into my attacker's face. Both Deb and I exclaim at the same time.

" _Hannah_?!"

My girlfriend starts to cry, great sobbing gasps of increasing volume as the initial shock of the break wears off and the throbbing, shooting pain sets in. She cradles her damaged wrist against her chest. What _in hell_ is she doing here? I am too surprised even to offer apology or comfort, although guilt and regret for hurting her do slowly seep into my soul from all sides. She's crying. I feel mean. Of course, had I known it was her, I'd not have reacted as I did.

"Hannah, are... are you alright?" I ask finally, awkwardly. Clearly, she isn't.

"No I'm not alright!" Hannah cries, frustrated and hurt. "You nearly twisted my hand off!"

"You crazy fucking bitch," Deb snaps, not pitying in the least. "What did you _think_ would happen when you sneaked up and drew a _knife_ on a psycho like Dexter? And what in the name of fuck are you doing here? You're supposed to be in _hiding_."

"I'm getting things _done_ ," Hannah throws back between sobs. "I didn't know you two would be here."

"So you say 'hi, I'm here too'. You don't pull a knife on a killer and a cop!"

"It was a _joke_ ," Hannah yells tearfully at Debra, who yells back, "Oh? I couldn't tell because jokes are supposed to be _funny_."

" _Shhh_!" I hiss. "People will hear you." They quieten down and glare at each other. Hannah sobs pathetically and gingerly tests her limp hand.

"I think you broke it," she whimpers at me. "You hurt me..."

I don't mean to compare them, but her words bring to mind the awful few minutes of yesterday when I pulled glass from my sister's shoulder and she said something similar. _You're hurting me_. I recall the pain her pain caused me. I remember how low it made me feel to see her cry and know it was because of me. Though I feel regret for hurting Hannah, I am in no degree of pain while tears tumble down her pretty face. I assume it has something to do with the fact that I am not in love with Hannah. That, and the fact that I consider her at least partly to blame for her own misfortune. Deb's right, it was stupid to threaten me before announcing herself.

"Let me look," I offer, reaching for her. She hesitates, and then reluctantly allows me to take her shaking hand and examine it with gentle, probing fingers. The torchlight isn't very helpful but with my fingertips and Hannah's shuddery inhalations I locate the problem area. It doesn't feel like a clean break, probably just a fracture (there was definitely a crack) and if we get it strapped soon and if she keeps it still there should be minimal swelling.

"I can't go to a hospital," Hannah murmurs miserably. Deb rolls her eyes; even in the relative darkness I see it.

"No shit, Sherlock," she mocks. "You shouldn't even be out in public. Your stupid face has been all over the fucking news." She shakes her head. "How did you get here, anyway?"

"Bedroom window. It was unlocked, and there's a service stairwell and a ledge."

"No, how did you _get_ here? We didn't leave any cars at my place today."

"Bus," Hannah answers shortly. I raise an eyebrow.

"Bus?" I repeat. "Along with forty other passengers who could recognise you?"

"No one recognised me." Hannah sounds certain. She is wearing a long-strapped bag slung across her body, and withdraws a thin scarf. "I wore sunglasses and covered my hair with this. No one was looking at me."

I hand Hannah my torch. I take the scarf and begin wrapping her wrist, binding it tightly to prevent the swelling that is already beginning on a cellular level. Deb picks up the knife and swings it around casually with her fingers. I don't like seeing her with it. Not only does it remind me of the dream where I killed her with one, and the real-life nightmare of last night when she forced a kitchen knife into my hands, it simply doesn't feel right. She can have a gun. I'm alright with that. A gun is even more devastating in the wrong hands, but in my sister's, it is a tool of control and capability. A knife is for slicing, slashing, ripping open. A knife is for monsters like me. Not for her. My dreams and our living nightmares have indicated the kind of damage that can be done to someone like her with a knife. She now stops playing with it and examines it.

"This is from my kitchen," Deb notes, surprised. "It's all gross and covered in blood." She looks up at me and I look at the knife. It is indeed one of hers. It's the knife I grabbed a week ago and used to threaten Vogel and Saxon; it's the knife I stupidly left in my depressed sister's bathroom sink; it's the knife she asked me to kill her with last night. The same damn knife. I wish it would just go away.

"Clayton had it in a plastic bag on the dining room table," Hannah says dully. "I didn't know what it was about but they kept talking about a knife when they were at your place today so I thought it was probably not something we wanted them to have."

"Hmm, so there is a brain in there after all," Deb says with an over-sweet smile.

"That should hold," I say when I'm done with the bandaging. I step back from Hannah, snatch the knife from my sister and show it to Hannah. "You want to explain what you were going to do with this?"

"It was a joke," she repeats, meaningfully. She hands me back my torch. "I thought you'd know straightaway it was me. Because of how we got together."

I understand; Deb doesn't but she gets the gist.

"The sister is still present," she reminds us irritably. "She doesn't need the gross kinky imagery."

"She doesn't need to be here at all," Hannah retorts. "What _are_ you two doing here?"

"Taking care of you, sadly," Deb shoots back. "Trust me, I wish we had more interesting motives."

"We're here for those files," I explain to Hannah, as though my sister hasn't spoken, not wanting to play referee to their spats. I gesture with the torch's beam at the three boxes on the bed. "Clayton and Elway caught my scent and started digging. I'm here to take back the bone they're looking for."

"Oh? I wonder who put them onto you?" Hannah says sarcastically, turning her glare on Deb. And they start at each other all over again.

"Don't look at me," Deb snaps. "I didn't fucking say anything."

"The last thing you said this morning before you left was that you were going to hand me over. Half a day later the Federal Marshal Service and _your_ former employer are outside the window looking for me."

"So fucking what? You're a wanted murderer. Like it or not, people are going to be looking for you."

"You sold me out," Hannah accuses. "You told them where I was to save your own skin."

"Stop arguing," I plead uselessly. Neither listen to me.

"Your logic is fucking screwy," Deb responds. "If I wanted Clayton to have you, I'd have given him the front door key. He'd have you right now. And if I talked, I'd be sitting in lock-up next to him," she jerks her thumb at me, "and that doesn't suit me at all." She turns the light on her phone off, and the room darkens slightly, now lit only by my torch. "In case keeping _you_ safely hidden _in my house_ against my better judgement isn't a strong enough hint, I actually really love my brother, and if you had any idea how much, you would never suggest I would sell him out. That goes for you, too," she tells me in a cold aside. "Fucking accuse me, asshole."

I raise my hands helplessly. The evidence seems poor now but at the time seemed viable.

"I have a pretty good idea of how much you love your brother, Debra," Hannah replies, drying eyes narrow with spite. "You've worked so hard to keep it a secret – you almost had _me_ fooled – and it would be a shame for this whole façade to crumble. So, faced with Elway's photograph, you can see how I might assume you could screw me over to keep something like that underground." She smirks humourlessly at my sister; it's like I'm not even there. "You're even more damaged and fucked-up than I could have imagined. How long have you been screwing your brother? Did it start before or after he started seeing me?"

"I am _not_ screwing my brother," Deb says hotly, at the same time that I say, "We _aren't_ sleeping together!" Hannah doesn't look convinced, which annoys me, because this is one of the few actual truths I've told her lately and if she's going to believe anything straight up, it should be this. I add, "It's never happened, it never will."

"So, what? You just make out every now and then?"

"You have a filthy mind," Deb says, which is almost laughable coming from her, "and you're fucking paranoid." Again, almost laughable. "Nobody is trying to steal your boyfriend. Dexter is my _brother_."

"Yet you still see fit to straddle him and suck face on the sofa overnight," Hannah quips coolly.

Deb sighs in exasperation. "The picture isn't _real_."

"I'd like to believe that but it must have looked more convincing to me than it did to you."

"You're being an idiot."

"An idiot? Yes, I must be, to have walked into your fucking drama of a relationship."

"There's nothing going on," Deb insists, to which Hannah responds, "It's pretty clear that's not the case, Debra," and it goes back and forth like that, and it looks to be doomed to become a childish 'is not', 'is too' battle between them until Deb cracks and yells, "I can't compete with you, so why would I try?"

Hannah freezes while I shush Deb angrily. She ignores my reminder about the neighbours.

"You... what?" Hannah asks uncertainly, confidence shaken. Deb rolls her eyes and folds her arms. The bad attitude is genuine but I sense an act coming on. My sister, the performer.

"You heard me. You know you're fucking gorgeous. Even if I was the brother-fucking freak you keep telling me I am, even if I _did_ want to trade places with you – and believe the fuck out of me, I do _not_ – I wouldn't try that path because I'm competing with _that_ ," she gestures at Hannah's figure, more curvaceous than her own, "and the thrill of rejection wouldn't be worth the pathetic remains of my self-esteem. I didn't kiss my brother. I'm as fucking upset about Elway's photo as you are. But long story short, in this one respect, you don't need to worry about me."

Flattery will get you anywhere. Hannah is clearly totally thrown by Deb's convincing false admission. Her mascara is smudged with her tears and her mouth hangs slightly open. I'm sure my expression is exactly as dumbfounded as hers. I really don't know how to, or whether to, back Deb up. Deb watches the other woman with cool challenge in her eyes. Hannah recovers from her shock first.

"You don't really think that," she says finally, unsure. "You hate me."

"Yeah, I really do. Hate you, I mean," Deb clarifies. "You can think what you like about the rest. You know what you look like. You know what Dexter's done for you. He _loves_ you." Deb pulls a face and emphasises the word like it's unclean. To her it probably is. To me it's still, in part, true. I do love Hannah. I don't love her like I thought I did, or anywhere as much as she loves me, but I'm sure what's there is still worthy of being called love. "As much as I _don't_ want you in our lives – and trust me, honestly, I want you fucking _gone_ – I'm now resigned to the fact that you're a fact of fucking life and I'm just going to have to put up with you for fucking ever. I can't rid myself of you." She frowns; her next words, I think, are truer to her than the previous ones. "By this point all our lives, all three of us, are so hopelessly entangled that whatever happens to one inevitably affects the other two. If you go down so do I and so does Dexter. If he's caught they'll work me out pretty soon after and things don't look good for you without us."

"Not to mention you and I would be at each other's throats within hours of being stuck together without him," Hannah comments sardonically.

"That too," Deb agrees. "And I can promise you, if I'm the one they work out first, you two fuckers are coming down with me because hardly _any_ of this shit is my fault. I'm not taking your fall." She meets my gaze for a tiny moment. Silently assuring me she's lying. What she said earlier in the change room is Deb's truth. She is no sell-out. If caught I am sure she'd find a way around this promise to bring Hannah in after her, but I also know she won't let me down. She loves me too much; I almost physically ache at the thought of how much, and where it could lead her. I can't let things get to that; I can't let her fall for me. Because I won't be able to catch her. When she tried to confess to Quinn for killing Maria La Guerta, I experienced a stroke of good luck and was able to get her out before she threw herself to the wolves. Next time we may not be so fortunate. She goes on, "We're fucking stuck with each other, as cosy and comforting as that sounds. I can't get rid of you and you can't get rid of me. So forever it is."

We are all silent after that. I look to Hannah, daring to hope that Deb's mixture of honest admission and blatant lie will reach and persuade her. Slowly, she nods. "Okay. Alright."

Deb is taken aback. "Okay, alright, what?"

"I mean okay. Alright. I don't like you either. I'm pretty sure I dislike you enough to last me through forever. I _know_ you hate _me_ enough to keep you going that long. So let's do it."

"Do what?" I ask, mystified. Agreement is not what I expected. Hannah answers, but gives her answer to my sister.

"Hate each other. Envy each other. Love Dexter. Love Harrison. Endure. Live. Stay free and safe and watch each other's backs until we can get away from each other, and then hate each other from afar. For always." She sighs. "Dexter loves you. I can't fathom why, since all you two do is bicker and fight, and since you are pretty much the least likable and most difficult person I have ever met, but he's made it clear to me he has no interest in living his life without you and that things will always be at least as weird with you two as they seem right now. If I want him I have to accept that you come as part of that package, and I do want him, so you're right, we're stuck with each other. Forever it is. Let's do it."

"I have no idea what you're offering," Deb admits. "You're selling it like it's a good idea but there's an awful lot of 'hate' involved."

"I'm offering you a truce, an alliance," Hannah explains coolly. Right hand injured, she extends her left one. "We both love the same man. We both care endlessly about his son. Dexter wants us both in his life and we both want to live to enjoy that. The only way to survive is to ensure the other does – if either of us goes down, like you said, everything crumbles to dust. We can make this work. We have to. I could be your sister-in-law one day."

"Oh, don't make me gag," Deb complains. She accepts Hannah's hand. "Fine. Uneasy, hateful allies. Provided you don't say that again."

I shake my head. Why couldn't they have come up with this obvious solution at some point in the past fortnight of forcibly living together? It would have made things much easier. By now I've decided to rid my life of Hannah and I suppose for Deb, who knows this, it's an easy promise to make, knowing she won't have to actually keep it, and for Hannah, who doesn't have a clue, peace with my antagonistic sibling is like a godsend. Freed from any deep or imagined feeling for Hannah, I know that letting the relationship fade is still the safest and most logical option for me, even if she and Deb suddenly become the best of fake friends. Hannah needs to go. Chilled-out and understanding Hannah will be much easier to safely remove than a pissed-off, vengeful one.

"I'll try to restrain myself from rubbing my future with your brother in your face," Hannah agrees with a ruthless smile. Deb smiles tightly back, a knowing glint in her eye but not betraying this in her expression. It's our secret, one we will keep until Hannah is safely away from us. My girlfriend's gaze slides finally over to me, triumph lighting her from the inside. I can tell she is relieved to have made an uneasy but solid and formal peace with Deb. She sees this as a huge step forward, smoothing our future together and eliminating the majority of our obstacles.

"And try not to poison me," Deb reminds her. "I'm sure Dexter would be most upset to find me dead at your hand."

"Again, I'll try to restrain myself," Hannah says, "as long as you restrain yourself from trying to break us up all the time and pitting us against each other over you and Harrison."

"Over me?" My sister pretends to be surprised. Hannah raises her eyes delicately to the dark ceiling and sighs.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about."

"I do not," Deb answers with a shrug that is loaded with attitude. "Oh, wait. Do you mean like this?"

She grabs me with her gloved hands before I can stop her or think to act, and kisses me full on the mouth. She pushes hard against me, lips working mine, arms lacing around my back to hold us closely together. I feel her phone, clenched in her fist, knock against the back of my shoulder. Instinctively, alarmed, I stretch away my hand wielding the knife as far as I can reach it; the other drops the torch and closes on her upper arm and tries to pull her off. Each time we've kissed or almost kissed it's been a disastrously bad idea – this is only different in that the timing is perhaps worse. Deb strains against my pull for a few seconds, enforcing the kiss on me, until she feels the kiss is complete and allows me to haul her away. She drops her arms from around me and we both exhale heavily.

"Deb, what are you doing? Are you crazy?" I demand, equally horrified that she would so casually drop the fragile cover story we've been working on and that she would throw herself at me while I am holding a knife. Of course she can't read my thoughts to understand how petrified I am of hurting her so she continues as she was, unpitying and unconcerned. She turns back to Hannah and laughs. I should never forget that while my sister is wonderful and perfect and magical and strong and all those great things, she is also at least a little bit, yes, crazy.

"Damn, that was worth it just to see the look on your face," she comments to Hannah. She extends her pinky finger innocently. "Sisters, right?"

I am spared the aftermath of my sister's reckless inability to stand down from a perceived challenge from Hannah by the sound of a door opening. We all freeze up and listen attentively. I hear keys jangling and in the main living space, a light switches on, and by then we three are all moving, swift and silent, to find hiding places. Deb and Hannah make for the closet while I stoop for my torch, turn it off and quickly tidy the pile of paper it disrupted. I look up as I hear the front door close. Hannah has wrenched the closet door open and the two pause momentarily, realising there is only room for one of them inside. Calculating the risks quickly in her fast mind, Deb does what I would have done and shoves Hannah inside and pushes the door shut after her. Hannah is the most in need of concealment, and Hannah is the one least useful in a confrontation. The latest entrant to the house finishes locking the front door.

I am halfway around the bed by this point and catch my sister's hand as I pass her. We pick our way quickly over the systematically piled paperwork and duck down behind the bed as steady footsteps sound down the hall. The other lights, the bedroom and the hallway, come on. I crouch right down, out of sight, and pull Deb under my arm. I keep the knife blade away from her and flat against the floor. We huddle close and low, working to slow our breaths. The light switch is flicked and a glary white light bulb springs to life. I tense, ready.

Nothing happens. Heads together, breaths quiet and shallow, Deb and I wait for the inevitable shitstorm of being found here. We blink, eyes trying to adjust to the harsh light. Slowly, I roll the torch to her. It isn't a weapon but it could be used as one in close quarters, and will be more effective than her iPhone.

The silence stretches forever. The person at the door doesn't walk in. I wonder what they're doing. Then Deb's phone, against my stomach where her hand is squashed between us, begins to vibrate. Frantic but silent, I loosen my grip on her and she pulls her hand into view. She hurriedly blocks the call from Clayton. We look at each other, not daring to breathe. Is that him? Is it someone else? Did they hear the phone buzz, and did they hear us shift to block it? We both startle and duck tighter together when we hear a sudden voice.

"Detective Morgan," Max Clayton says, and I adjust my grasp on Hannah's knife and prepare to launch myself over the bed. "I'm sure you're driving right now but I'm just calling to let you know I'll be quite late." I relax slightly; he's on the phone. "I'm caught in traffic not five minutes from my place – there's an accident and they've closed off the intersection. I'll be there, though. Just order a drink and wait for me and I'll see you soon."

After a few seconds, Deb's phone shakes in her hand to alert her to her newest voicemail. Clayton walks away and, from the echoing sound of footsteps bouncing off tiled walls, goes into the bathroom. He flicks another light on and shuts the door behind him. He is in no hurry. He is not caught in traffic, obviously, and is apparently in no rush to meet Deb on the other side of the city, but he is pretending to be on his way. Which means he expects her to believe that and act on that. Why?

"He knows," she mouths silently at me, and I have to agree. Clayton knows, or at least suspects, Debra Morgan does not really intend to meet him at the Oriental Garden Restaurant on Williams Avenue and spill her guts about every damning detail of her involvement with Hannah McKay. Now that Elway has told him she's with me, he's realised the truth – the restaurant is a ruse to get him out of his motel so we can break in and steal back the case files. He is lying to Deb to maintain the illusion that he believes her, in the hopes we'll walk straight in... and he'll be waiting for us.

I can't leave. Not without those files and not without wiping Clayton's computer clean. I need time, but time is something I don't have. Eventually Clayton will come into this room and notice us, probably sooner rather than later. And then we'll be utterly, irretrievably fucked. I'll have no choice but to kill him. And that could get messy. He's strong and trained in combat and defence – imagine if my sister had to step in to help me overpower him? I reject that awful thought. Assume I get the knife into his jugular on the first stroke. Unlike the deaths of scum like my usual prey, the death of someone authoritative and respectable is generally more thoroughly investigated, and even if I manage to clean up this scene and dispose of the body with haste and efficiency, I can see this situation becoming extremely uncomfortable. Inquiries. Clayton's replacement. Renewed interest in Hannah's case. Deb is still looking at me, half-terrified, half-determined, totally uncertain, waiting for my signal. Waiting for me to lead us out of trouble.

With my arm over her, I pull her closer and press my lips against her ear so no sound can get away. "You need to get out," I whisper, barely a breath. She shivers. "Distract him. Get him out of here. Keep him busy. I'll handle the rest." She leans away to frown questioningly and starts to shake her head in disagreement; there isn't time, however, and I pull her back to tell her, "Trust me, Deb. Like I trust you." That does it. With the hand holding the phone she rolls the torch back to me and uses her empty hand to find one of mine. "Bedroom window. Go!"

Clayton is still in the toilet and there's at least a few more precious seconds available to us. Deb gives in and unfolds herself hurriedly from our awkward crouch. My arm falls from her shoulders; she stumbles as she straightens and I push her by the small of her back, propelling her forwards. I sit up to watch her leave and ensure she isn't noticed. She rounds the bed and leaps nimbly over piles of paper. She reaches the door within a second. She glances back at me, just once, as she slips out, and I read everything in that look. I lean aside to look through the doorway and see her race silently into Clayton's bedroom, shove aside an ugly curtain and squeeze herself through the narrow horizonal gap in the old sash window that Hannah left open. Her long ponytail is the last of her to disappear into the night. Gone. I drop back down as the toilet flushes.

Clayton hums to himself as he washes his hands. He heard nothing. I hope this unconcerned, inattentive behaviour remains with him long enough for Deb to get him out of my hair. I wait for his phone to ring. I wait longer. What is she waiting for? Didn't Hannah say there was a service stairwell? Shouldn't my sister be almost to the ground by now?

Still humming, the bathroom door reopens and Clayton wanders past the room I'm in. He looks in briefly, presumably notes the tightly locked and bolted window, flicks the light switch and shuts the door. I'm not delighted about this development. I am at less risk of being seen or caught but I am also less able to overhear what is going on with Clayton. And I am quite unable to escape.

"Dexter?" Hannah breathes fearfully through the slats of the closet door. I assume she saw Deb leave. Softly, I shush her. She either doesn't hear me or chooses to ignore me. "Dexter?"

"Shh," I whisper again. "Not a word. Deb's got this. Just wait."

It's another minute at least of waiting, and I'm starting to fret. Distantly, I hear a phone ring. I strain to listen.

"Detective?" Elway greets the caller. "That's right, nasty accident, but I'm sure they'll clear it up quickly... You just sit tight, I won't be far... Oh. Oh, you are? I suppose..." His tone changes from one of assuredness and control to one of surprise. "That place sounds much closer but I'm not sure I can really get off this road... Oh, no," he backtracks hastily when she makes her next suggestion, "you don't need to do that. You'll just get caught in the same traffic jam. I'm sure I can find a gap to turn around... Oh... Okay... Uh, yeah, alright. I, uh... Yeah, all going well, I could be home in... fifteen minutes?" By now he sounds truly confused and entirely disempowered. She's changed the game to something he didn't expect. "Sure. You know the address?"

He recites it for her and hangs up. There are a few minutes of silence. Then I hear him hurrying up the hall. I stay right down. There are the sounds of drawers opening and items being removed, presumably in the main bedroom. I hear the window be slammed shut. Clayton's voice comes back, frustrated and irritable now.

"You told me she was with her brother!" he snaps, and when there is no defensive retort I gather he is on the phone again, and I further infer he is calling Elway. "Well, she bloody isn't, because she's on her way _here_ now! She really _does_ want to talk... No, I just spoke to her, and she isn't trying to get me out of my place at all. I reckon you're wrong about that one. The brother, maybe, but... Yeah, alright, so they're fuck-ups. Doesn't make them both criminals... I know, I shouldn't let my guard down. She could be innocent, but it's just as likely that we're onto something and she's coming over to knock me out and grab those cases... Guess I just won't turn my back on her... No, I've only done so much as open the boxes and check the inventory. Nothing standing out at the moment... I'll keep you posted on what she says when she gets here..."

The door of this room snaps open and the light comes back on. I am ready for confrontation but hoping we can avoid it. I listen as Clayton stacks objects against the wall. I assume that with Debra's arrival imminent, these are things he doesn't want for her to see him with.

"No, don't come over here!" Clayton irritably tells Elway. "Like Morgan's going to talk if _you_ turn up. I can take care of myself. Just stay at your place and keep those case files where you can see them. God help us if you're right and the Morgans are coming to steal the files... No, I mean, if one Morgan is coming here," he clarifies, "you should keep your eyes open for the other one." He goes quiet and listens briefly. "Just get into those files and see if you can find anything we can use to nail the Morgans, or even better, nail them and catch McKay. Bye."

Clayton is an even better strategist than I gave him credit for, I muse as he turns off the light and shuts this room back up. I didn't even think to send Deb to Elway's, to double-team the double team. It's a good idea. But if I had I'd be screwed now, because I'm in a tight spot and I'm relying on her to get me out of it. Unable to convince him to meet her in public, Deb is now coming back here to keep him engaged long enough for me to get what I need, jimmy that window and get myself and Hannah the hell out.

I'm disappointed that Clayton is so suspicious of my sister and me. His future was looking so promising, too. So... existent. Now it's looking considering duller and shorter. I'm understandably unnerved by how much he has worked out without even reading the files on the bed. He has worked out the dangerous creature I might actually be. He's got all the pieces ready to slot together, and once he finds the jigsaw frame in those boxes he's going to have all he needs to totally tear my life apart. And my sister's. And my children's. Everyone who cares about me will be drowned in the turbulent waves of repercussion.

Fourteen minutes pass. I get a message from Deb's phone, an update in case I didn't hear this side of the conversation: _Hope your shit's on silent, bro. Sit tight, coming back up in 15_. I hear Clayton moving around the apartment, tidying, though there is no discernible mess to tidy up, and finally there is a knock at the door. I slowly stand, only now feeling safe enough to start moving around. I go to the door and listen closely.

"I didn't see the accident," I hear my sister's voice. "You don't know Miami very well, do you? You must have been going the long way."

Clayton laughs and invites her inside. She keeps him engaged in light conversation while I sneak to the closet. I switch on my torch, quietly open the door and let Hannah out.

"What's going on?" she whispers. "Where did Debra go?"

I nod my head in the direction of the living room. Hannah frowns and listens. In the glow of the torchlight, her eyes widen with understanding. She doesn't look happy about it. I give her the torch and my lock picking kit.

"Your job," I whisper, "is to get that window open. Not a sound, alright?"

"She kissed you. What was that about?"

I frown; I'd totally forgotten about that, and in all honesty, even if I hadn't, I wouldn't be thinking of it now. "It was for your benefit, as I'm sure you already guessed, and that's it. Worry about getting us out of here and then you can go back to being pissed with her."

"What a bitch! We'd _just_ agreed to try to be friends."

"I didn't hear any mention of friendship, and I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for an apology, either," I comment. I gesture at the window. "Tonight sometime would be good, Hannah."

"My hand is useless," she hisses at me. "How am I meant to pick a lock in the dark with only one hand?"

"You'll have to find a way," I answer. I find her deliberate lack of resourcefulness annoying. "Hold the torch with your teeth, that's what I'd do."

"Dexter." Hannah steps close to me, worry brightening her eyes. "You heard me before. I want you. I love you. Do you love me?"

"Hannah-"

"I know we don't have time to talk about this. But I need you to tell me. Do you really love me? Is all this – Clayton, the whispering in the dark, the window, your psychotic sister – worth the effort? Please, just tell me."

I stare at her. Do I _really_ love her? Yes, as in 'actually', but no, not _really_ like 'a lot'. Not like she wants me to, and not like she needs. Our love is vague, colourless. Is all this worth it? Again, both yes and no can apply. No, it won't get her what she wants from me. No, we're doing this more to save my ass and Deb's than for Hannah's. But yes, if she can believe me and play her part for another week, it'll all be worthwhile. She'll be safe and at total liberty, and far away from the poisonous influence I am sure to have on her future. She'll be free of me. _That_ will be worthwhile, even if she won't realise it at first.

It all hinges on her believing in me, so I gently cup her face in my hand and kiss her. I let it drag out, lingering and romantic. When I finally break away I whisper, "I love you. It's worth it."

Hannah holds my gaze for a second and I see in her that she's completely convinced. She nods and goes to the window. Seizing my reprieve, I start searching Clayton's floor paperwork for things of interest.

His system is highly helpful. I quickly determine the subject matter of each pile and am able to move on to other ones once I am aware of the usefulness of each. Anything concerning I throw into the Speltzer box, the emptiest of the three, but there isn't much I want. At the door is my prize. Clayton has stashed his laptop in his pile of things he didn't want Deb to have access to. I switch it on and break in using his badge number (which I find on a folder he threw atop the pile), and I guess the password to be his daughter's name – which I locate inside the photo album he hid. Thanks for the convenience, Clayton. Very thoughtful of you.

I browse recent files and note that Clayton has started documenting his interest in my sister and I.

 _JE claims to have seen Dexter Morgan leave the crime scene at EV house. Det. Morgan story confirmed by blood evidence as analysed by Dexter Morgan. Bias? Cover-story? Highly consistent, seems unlikely. No evidence of McKay onsite. Indication of JE justifying suspicions with personal issues_.

_Background search on Dr Evelyn Vogel. Psychiatrist. Specialisation in psychopaths. Long-time family friend of Morgan family. Friend of father. No apparent link with HM at this point. No apparent link with Oliver Saxon at this point. Has treated Det. Morgan. Depression? Unstable? EV enjoys personal relationship with Dexter Morgan. Current location unknown. Shot at Det. Morgan instead of violent intruder. Reasons? Considered Det. Morgan greater threat? EV allied with OS? How does EV specialisation in psychopaths tie into this? Dexter Morgan also present for shooting? Dexter Morgan actual target of EV?_

_Photographs from JE. Morgan siblings also lovers? How does HM fit into this?_

_Interview with Det. Morgan. Arrived late with brother. Appearance of both decidedly poor. Dep. Chief Matthews insistent on taking part in interview. Protective? Concerned? Informed? Blocked many lines of questioning. Det. Morgan seemingly open but not altogether helpful. No new leads_.

_Visit to Det. Morgan residence. No one on premises. Bloodied knife buried in sand._

_Case files obtained by JE. Numerous cases on which Morgan siblings have worked and have been personally involved or compromised. Impartiality of department? Need for inquiry? Morgan siblings able to influence outcomes of homicide cases where they have been involved. Hiding something?_

_New direction: Morgan siblings as criminal accomplices of HM? Dexter Morgan became involved with HM with awareness of her history and pastimes. Det. Morgan covering for brother. Sal Price expired at Dexter Morgan residence. Investigated by Lt. Morgan, SP also reported on dates with Lt. Morgan in days prior to death. Poisoned by HM? Covered by Morgan siblings? Morgans followers of HM? Or Morgans ringleaders?_

"Fuuuccckkk," I whisper, blown away by what I am reading. Hannah glances over but says nothing. Deputy Marshal Max Clayton is much further along my trail than I suspected. I shudder uncomfortably; he's practically breathing down my neck. I now fear that removing these boxes from his apartment and resetting his computer might not be enough to save my hide. He's got me in his sights, and worse, he's looking into Debra, too, and he's literally got her in arm's reach _right now_. I shuffle across the floor and press my ear against the door while I load Clayton's emails.

"... pretty awkward," I hear my sister say. "As I'm sure you appreciate."

"I imagine it would be difficult to explain," Clayton agrees. "I don't suppose it's every day your workmates see a picture of you and your brother in such a compromising situation."

"I knew he'd show them to you. So much for twenty-four hours, hey? Dishonourable bastard. It makes me sick to think he was outside my house, waiting, with a camera..."

"In Mr Elway's defence-"

"Don't defend him. He's a sick fuck."

"In his defence, I don't think he expected what he saw," Clayton finishes.

"So he was only waiting for me to get undressed. I feel so much better."

"You know what I mean."

There is a pause; I infer that they are either eating or drinking something, from the length of the pause. I open the inbox. There is nothing of particular interest to me, except one that arrived early this morning from Elway. I click on it and find five photos of my sister and I from last night. Indeed, the second attachment is the one with the knife. I look at that one the longest. Even from a distance the hopelessness is clear in her eyes, her face, her posture; and just as clear in me is my horror and dismay that things could get this bad. I delete the email and steel my nerves. Clayton may be onto me but it's not the worst thing that could happen. The worst thing that could happen almost _did_ happen last night, and we avoided it, by a hair's breadth. I almost lost Deb. But I managed to keep her. So as long as that's the case, I can deal with whatever else life throws at me. We can get through this. The universe will conspire to make this work. It has to.

I check the outbox for indications that Clayton has sent his notes or any other kind of report to his superiors, but the latest sent email is a response to Elway's, early this morning, agreeing to meet. I find no evidence that he has shared his latest direction with anyone via electronic communication. Thank God.

"In any case," Deb says, "you've seen the pictures, so you know my brother and I aren't helping Hannah McKay."

"How does that prove anything?"

"Because Dexter is with me, not her. She is a complication we really don't need."

"I believe you," Clayton says now, and in the next pause I imagine him sipping a drink. "I really believe that you believe that. But how can you be so sure of _him_? McKay is a manipulator of men – she married Castner for his money and connections, and once she had what she wanted she's off and he's MIA. If there's _any_ chance your brother could be involved with McKay again, he's in danger and you need to help me before it's too late."

I angle my gaze over to Hannah. Little does Clayton know she's so close, but he's absolutely right. Even with her broken wing she's a vicious bird of prey, not a sweet little dove. I, and those most important to me, have been in danger ever since I let Hannah back into my life. I go back to my task. I begin the process of totally resetting the computer to its factory state.

"Dexter is in love with me," Deb insists, and I smile in the dark. She knows. I can hear in her voice the strength it's given her to know what she means to me. I have been so scared for her in recent times, petrified of losing her to herself and to me, but this Deb isn't one I need to be scared for. She will manage. She will endure. Because she knows. She knows she is loved, adored, wanted, needed... good enough. Tonight's Deb might do something crazy like suggest we run away together, or throw me before the metaphorical train of Hannah's jealousy, but she won't cut her own face out of photographs. This is the Deb of old, and I like that I can hear her. I love that she is back. I hear her say, "He's the one who gave me Hannah in the first place. He thought she was going to hurt me, and she slipped up and mentioned that pen. Look, you can think what you want," she says finally, apparently not getting through to him, and I hear him cough while she continues, "but you don't know my brother, you don't know me, and you don't know us. We're not normal; fuck, we're not even close, but this shit with Hannah McKay is so not us. She's a fucking serial murderer, and a poisoner at that – you couldn't trust that bitch as far as you could fucking throw her. I told Dex that when he first... Are you alright?"

Clayton has started coughing again. He dismisses her attention.

"No, it's nothing, I'm fine," he says gruffly when the coughing subsides after a moment. "Tell me about..."

I stop listening. The laptop asks if I want to go ahead with the factory reset. Several 'are you sure?' pop-up boxes appear; I wonder why computers do this, try so hard to dissuade users from resetting them. Are they programmed with some kind of virtual self-preservation instinct, the beginning of highly concerning self-awareness? Or do the manufacturers simply record such high numbers of consumers accidentally initiating a memory wipe of their whole computer without really understanding what they were doing that they have to program the computers to give so many warnings? Either way, I am sure it is worth being afraid for society. I click yes to each one and watch as Clayton's computer begins to terminate all of its own memories.

That might be a handy ability, I reflect. Delete the past. There are so many dark elements to my own history – what if I could push a few buttons and make myself forget them all? Take back all the bad. Undo everything hurtful that has been said. Wipe clean the wrongs. Remove every memory of hurting, manipulating, lying... But even before the thought has finished forming I know I do not wish for it. I have done so much wrong, but to simply undo and forget it doesn't fix _me_. It doesn't stop me doing it all again. If I took back asking Harrison to lie for me, I would feel no guilt for it – what would stop me from doing the same later? If I forgot how devastating I've been to Debra, how would I understand how deeply loyal she's been in return and what would exist to prevent me from letting her fall through my fingers? No, what's done is done, and it's important I know it, every single day. It's only through knowing what I've done that I can feel bad about it and try to better myself to atone for it.

Hannah sighs in frustration when her weak hand drops the lock pick. She pulls the torch from between her teeth. "I can't get this open."

I leave the laptop on the floor and go to her. We both stoop to collect the pick; in her bag, I hear a soft clink of glass containers knocking together.

"What have you got in there?" I ask quietly, straightening and squinting at the lock on the window. It's a modern locking mechanism, odd for an aged sash window such as this one, and I know that Hannah never stood a chance of getting it open. At least it kept her busy for as long as it did.

"Just some jars," Hannah replies offhandedly, shining the torch on the key slot. I nod absently and make a start on the lock. I battle with it for about a minute before realising I cannot win. I pull my phone from my pocket, glancing back over at the laptop on the floor beside the door. The screen indicates that the wipe has been done, and the computer is restarting itself. One task done. Now to get these case files, Hannah and myself the fuck out of Clayton's apartment and extricate my sister from his grasp at the same time, though from last I heard she seems to be holding her own. Hannah watches me text my sister. "What are you doing?"

"If Deb can get him outside we can slip out the way you came in," I whisper as I type. "She only has to get him to walk with her as far as the stairwell, pretend to get a message from Jamie or something to go collect Harrison, apologise and leave." I hit 'send' and wait. In the silence I look again at Hannah's bag, and my brain finally finishes processing her explanation. "Did you say you're carrying around glass jars? Jars of what?"

Hannah extracts one from her bag and hands it to me. It's a cleaned-out pasta sauce jar filled with a dark, thin, viscous liquid. I blink and turn my phone so the backlight of the screen illuminates the contents to their natural dark red colour.

"Whose blood is this, Hannah?" I ask, not sure whether I feel seduced or repulsed by this strange development. I turn the jar, watching in typical captivation as the blood swills from side to side, leaving its yolky residue up the insides of the glass. Then I watch that run back down to join the rest, staining the glass in red. We are all slaves to gravity. I can feel through the glass that the blood is cold, and I see thicker, dried residue higher up the glass walls of its prison, and know it has started to clot when it has been left still for too long – it's been in this jar for a while, not just today.

"Mine," she answers, surprising me further. It's enough to pull my attention away from the jar and look back to Hannah's torch-lit face. Seriously?

"Yours? How?" I have fallen out of my depth, apparently, because this insane situation we three find ourselves in tonight has only just now become too weird for me to understand. Slowly, awkwardly with her injured hand, Hannah lifts the cut-off hem of her shorts to show me her outer thigh. I crouch to look at the small scabs peppering her skin. They are no older than three days, I estimate. I look up at her. "You hurt yourself?"

"It didn't hurt much," she disagrees.

"But you've been... bloodletting?" Inside, I react like my sister might. What. The. Fuck. This just got _fucking weird_. I look back to the cuts. I'm both shocked and fascinated by their neatness, the preciseness. They are each directly over a vein or artery. There is a notable quantity of blood in this jar, and plenty more in the others, I estimate. How have I not noticed this? Hannah is thinking along that same line.

"You would know that if you talked to me for more than five minutes a day and if you were sleeping with me instead of beating down doors to spend your nights screaming at your sister," she comments coolly. I shake my head, refusing to be diverted from the main issue.

"What are you doing wandering Miami with a stash of your own blood?"

Hannah takes this opportunity to look confused. "I told you already. I'm getting things done. I was mad with you. I thought..." She blushes, delicate pinkness visible even in the dim light. "I thought you were forgetting about me and focussing on your sister and all her problems – and whatever else I thought was going on between you. I really thought you'd lost track of everything that matters. But here you are."

She smiles lovingly. In the next room, I hear strained voices and the sounds of people moving around. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck start to stand up. I have no idea whatsoever what Hannah means, but my instincts assure me I won't like what I find out when I do. I open my mouth to say so. Instead of my own whispered voice, I hear another one, a heart-wrenchingly familiar, strangled shout.

"Dexter! _Dex_!? Help!"


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I really didn't expect to write this many chapters and so I'm fresh out of witty (or less-than-witty, depending on your view of my humour) comments to put here.

I hear my sister calling for me and I am in motion. I spin away from Hannah and stoop to grab the knife I left beside the bed. This knife and I have been through a lot lately. From there I vault over the bed, knocking papers from their ordered piles as I land without a thought for the integrity of Clayton's system or the crime scene I've just made this room into. Rule Number One is _don't get caught_ but the Code comes second to my family, and my sister's urgent shouts drive all other concerns – like getting caught, or like the potential risk to my life by running out and surprising an armed and suspicious Federal Marshal, or the craziness of Hannah and the jars of blood – far away. Images of what could be happening nag at me – has Clayton tried to arrest Deb? Elway was considering coming, is he here? – but I do not allow them to take root. I concentrate only on getting there to stop it, whatever it is. She wouldn't break cover like this for anything less than an emergency.

" _Dexter_!" There it is again, desperate, urgent; and then, to someone else, "Please, please be alright. I'm sorry... I don't know..."

I pause beside the freshly wiped and restarted laptop on the floor beside the door only long enough to wrench the door open and burst into the main living area of the motel apartment. I run about three strides and then I am in sight of her. I slow right down and try to do the same with my mind so I can take in what I am seeing. Deb is standing, alone, unhurt, thank God, a stricken expression on her face. Her hands, no longer gloved, are woven tightly in her own hair, and her hazel eyes are locked onto the writhing form at her feet. Deputy Marshal Max Clayton seems to have taken all of two staggering steps from his chair and collapsed in a pained heap on the floor, where he continues to convulse in apparent agony. Now I hear his low groaning and wet splutters, sounds I did not notice before, too focussed was I on Deb's voice. I cross the room to her; she looks at me wildly.

"I swear to fuck, I didn't do this," she insists, like she has to justify herself to me. "I don't know what happened, he just..."

I rest a hand on Deb's arm to placate her and look again at Clayton as he coughs. As he uncurls from his agonised foetal position I see the red on his chin and more on the floor. This is quite a sudden development. It was not much more than half an hour, maybe forty minutes, ago that I heard this man humming as he washed his hands, apparently in good spirits and in limited if any pain. Now he is rolling on the floor and groaning like he's being eaten by lions and coughing up blood. He notices me. His eyes narrow accusingly.

"Morgans. Should've known," he mutters. "Shouldn't have turned my back."

"What happened?" I demand of Deb, trying to keep a calm, even tone for the sake of her already rattled nerves.

"I didn't do anything!"

"I know, I know. What _did_ happen?" I shake her lightly, trying to prompt her and also remind her that I am still present, still here, still on her side. "Tell me what happened."

She covers her mouth with a shaky hand, upset. "He was alright, and then he was coughing a little and looked kind of uncomfortable, like he had a bellyache, and then... he kept clearing his throat… then there was the blood and he got up, and he just fell straight down and it all got worse and I couldn't get him back up. Oh, shit," she adds desperately, as Clayton closes his eyes and moans, apparently in the crest of some excruciating wave of pain. Deb whips out her phone. "We have to call an ambulance, we have to." But I don't need to tell her how bad that could be for us. She lowers the phone before she has even finished dialling, eyes haunted. "Fuck, fuck..."

Clayton pants exhaustedly as the worst of the pain subsides. He glares up at us. "Elway was right. What have you done to me?"

"No." Deb shakes her head determinedly and reaches down for him, hands fluttering uselessly between touching his shoulder comfortingly and feeling his sweat-beaded face. I'm reminded of Vogel, yesterday, fussing over the dying Saxon. "We didn't do this. We didn't... We're not here to hurt you. You're going to be alright. You-" She is cut off when Clayton coughs violently, sputtering blood across the floor and her hand. She looks on in captivated horror. I try to pull her away; she resists. She holds the blood-peppered hand away from her and says, slowly, "It's... _chunky_. Why is it chunky?"

Blood scrawled across a crime scene like art on a canvas, or quietly trapped in a glass jar, has much more appeal to me than when it is sprayed on my sister and comes from a sick person. But nonetheless blood is my ballgame and I crouch beside Deb to inspect it. I lay the knife on the floor, take her hand and turn it in the light to note that the red substance is indeed thicker than blood typically is known to be, and is scattered with clumps of filmy, strung-together cells... flesh.

"Did he eat something?" I ask, looking around. "Drink something?" I spot the silver platter on the side table with the crystal decanter. Is it emptier than when I first saw it? The cups are missing. I keep looking and Deb points with her phone at a glass tumbler lying several metres away on the floor, on its side, amber liquid pooling around it, where it presumably was dropped and spilt when Clayton fell.

"He had two glasses of that while I was here," she reports, "and I think he had a glass before I arrived. Both cups were upside-down before and when I came back in, his one was upright." She looks again at her bloodied hand. "Why? What's wrong with him?"

"I'm not sure. But that blood..." I hesitate. "You don't want to know."

She stares at me. "You have to tell me now you've said that."

"It's not just blood," I tell her. "It's the lining of his stomach. It's... dissolving."

Clayton groans and rolls onto his back as though even hearing about his affliction causes him pain. It certainly can't be helping. Debra's face pales in revulsion and horror.

"What _the fuck_ dissolves the lining of the stomach?" she asks weakly. She presses her hand to her own stomach in sympathy and probable queasiness. "What's going on here, Dexter?"

"Call me an ambulance," Clayton begs, twisting to the right in an attempt to escape the pain. Which, I imagine, is every bit as excruciating as he is making it out to be. Whatever he has consumed is highly acidic and has rapidly eaten through the lining of his stomach, leaving the organ in shreds that are coming back up the trachea. "Please, help me."

Deb lifts her phone again, the good guy in her desperate for this chance to get out and do some right in the world. But circumstances are still too dire, and all that is good and righteous and wonderful about my sister needs to stay locked away for just a little bit longer. Hating myself, I still her hand.

"Don't, Dex," she whispers, and I whisper back, "I'm sorry…" and I turn to our victim. "You'll tell everyone we did this to you," I say to Clayton. "We didn't."

"We're not what you think," Deb adds anxiously. She lays her blood-coated hand on his elbow as he coughs bodily and more blood, thick with chunks of flesh, comes up. "Fuck, please don't die. We didn't come here for this, honestly. We didn't come here to hurt you."

"I believe you," Clayton gasps. He might mean it; I doubt it but in his desperation to survive he puts a convincing power behind his words. "I believe _you_. Please, please, just help me."

For a third time my sister raises her phone and unlocks it. This time I think she is really going to call it in. Then the phone is plucked from her hand.

"Should've known," Clayton murmurs miserably, eyeing Hannah as she appears behind us. She turns the iphone off, awkwardly with only one usable hand. The other remains tight across her middle.

"Yes, you should've," she agrees. She hands the useless mobile back to Deb. "Very foolish of you to leave your drink out in the open like this, unsealed... And to leave your window unlocked – well, that's practically an invitation. If there was a next time, you'd know not to make it all so easy for me. But there won't be a next time, because you're already dead." My sister stares up at her, dismay and understanding lighting her features. Hannah stares back, unfeeling, and continues speaking to the deputy marshal. "You've only got a few minutes left, and it'll be over. So it wouldn't help for Detective Morgan to call 911; you wouldn't last long enough to greet the paramedics, let alone see the hospital doors."

" _You_ did this!" Deb accuses, distressed. "You fucking poisoned him. Just couldn't help yourself. Dexter and I agreed he didn't need to die."

"You two should maybe stop doing all your planning and agreeing without me," Hannah suggests coolly, unmoved by Clayton's agony and Deb's helpless panic. "I didn't know that's how you felt. I've been waiting days to know what you two were going to do about everything that was happening, and you didn't tell me anything, so I assumed you were going to pussy-foot around the issue, Debra, like you normally do, and let it get out of hand – like you let _me_ get out of hand, remember? So today I decided to take matters into my own hands. If you want something done right, and all that..."

"Don't listen to her," Clayton pleads. He groans and it's as though we all feel the acidic poison eating through his flesh. What in hell did Hannah use? "She's evil. Detective," he appeals, grabbing for Deb's bloody hand. His grip slips straight off. "You're a cop. You're not like her; not like _them_. You can't let this happen. Please, I need help. I don't care what you're doing here, I won't say a word, just please, please... It hurts..."

He moans again and rolls away. Deb can't take it. "He's dying! We have to do something."

"I did do something." Hannah's eyes are hard and cold. "He's a threat to us all, Debra. Unchecked, he was going to take our lives away. Our freedom. Dexter. He was going to ruin everything."

"He's doing _his job_ ," Deb argues, "looking for a fucking murderer who didn't cover her goddamn tracks. If you'd just been a little more _professional_ in your fucking hobby we wouldn't be in this situation right now!"

"For God's sake, Debra; weren't we going to try to be friends?" Hannah asks, exasperated.

"I am _not_ your fucking friend!"

"Apparently. It's always one step forwards, three steps back with you, isn't it?"

"This isn't _about_ me," Deb fumes. "This is about a good person dying for _no good reason_. It isn't fair," she appeals to me. "This isn't how it's meant to go. You _said_. You said if I told you how to get here you wouldn't kill him. He doesn't have to die. I know you know; this is one of the good guys. The good guy isn't meant to die."

"Everybody dies," I remind her gently. "Even the good people."

She knows this, but I understand her stubborn disbelief. Clayton is _her_ – the honest, principled, respectable professional, trying to catch bad people at his own risk, trusting others and offering the benefit of the doubt, afflicted with a moral code too firm and strong to allow him to stay afoot of and overcome his crafty, dishonourable opponents. And getting fucked over. I know it kills her to watch him suffer, but even worse is her vision of her own fate. It's a terrifying concept to be reminded of in this tense and horrid situation: that even the hero can be knocked out of the game at any time, leaving nothing but villains and their selfish schemes and an unsuspecting world. Like me. Like Hannah. People so rarely get what they deserve.

"I know that," she snaps at me, shaking her head. "Rita, Frank, Dad... Good people die when bad people want something. We couldn't help them. But we can stop this! We can save him."

"Yes, please, please," Clayton murmurs, curling up around his aching stomach. I do not often feel guilt or sadness for anyone outside my immediate circle of loved ones, but I feel marginal guilt and marginal sadness for Clayton right now. I keep thinking of the respectful way he has approached his hunt for Hannah, the way he has always assumed the best of me and my sister, the professional manner in which he has never been willing to jump to accusing us without absolute proof. Like with Vogel and Saxon, I'd prefer to see Jacob Elway lying here in his own insides than Clayton. Deb didn't want this to happen to him and actually, I didn't, either. But now I'm resigned to the truth of the matter. He _is_ dying and it _is_ for the best for me and mine. Deb can't see it, she won't. She is too good to see the good in someone dying for her benefit.

"It's too late to save him," Hannah assures us. Deb swats her hand back at Hannah angrily, trying to hit her or trying to dismiss her, I'm not sure which and I don't think Deb knows which, either.

"Go the fuck away!" she exclaims, frustrated with Hannah. "You're not helping!"

Hannah isn't put off. "I did the right thing."

" _The right thing_?!" Deb repeats, looking to me incredulously. She's waiting for me to back her up, scold Hannah, make Hannah fix this or pay for what can't be taken back. But I don't. I can't.

"Deb," I sigh, and she loses it.

"No!" she shouts at me. "No, no, no-" I hurriedly cover her mouth with my hand, grabbing the back of her head with my other one to muffle her repeated refusals while she claws at my gloves. She manages to pry one finger away to get her next words out; she makes an effort to lower her volume. " _No_. Don't _Deb_ me. You love _me_ , you can't take her side! This, this is _wrong_. He doesn't have to die. He didn't _do anything_." She sits up straighter so she can get her hand into her pocket; I look away, knowing what's coming out. "You said you owe me more than a bunch of flowers. You _promised_ not to fight with me. So don't. Do this: give me your phone and let me save him, please. Do it for-"

"Deb, he knows," I interrupt before she can hook me. Because she baits and manipulates me as surely as I do her. She plays coy but she knows how to work me. My words make her stop. The picture stays in her pocket. I drop my hands to her shoulders. "I saw his notes. He knows, and what he didn't know he's guessed in the past two minutes. I know what I said," I admit carefully, "and I didn't want it to come to this, but with everything on the line it's him or us... and I pick us."

"So do I," Hannah chimes in. Deb ignores her. She stares at me and the anger and fight drains out of her as she comes to understand our situation. That there's no better way. That the hero has to die. So does her notion that good will always eventually triumph over evil. This time, like most times in our experience, bad wins. Next time, I'll try to stack the deck so she can win instead, but this time she can't.

Clayton again grasps for Deb's hand.

"Don't," he pleads. "I won't say a word. I'll drop everything, the whole investigation... I'll do anything."

Quietly, I take Deb's other hand. I hate to be putting her in this position; literally the same position she and Hannah put me in last week when each held one of my hands, figuratively the same position I put her in on New Year's Eve. I hate to force her to choose between right and wrong and to know that the choice doesn't even really exist, because she _has_ to choose me and I'm the 'wrong' option. Like I told her last night, for us, there's never really a choice. It's illusory. We will choose each other whether we like it or not. We can't _not_. We live out our devastating cycle again and again, and no matter how much I say I want to change it, or how much she claims she's over it and not coming back, it's got to end the same every time: she has to choose me, I have to choose her, and we have to end up together again, back where we started. Trapped in our roles.

"He knows," I say again, a gentle reminder, and wrap my other arm around Deb's shoulders. She shakes her head no but still leans into me when I pull her in. I kiss her hair. "There's no choice here. I'm making it for you."

Because it's not fair to ask her to make it. I already ask too much.

"They'll kill you, too!" Clayton cries wildly, tugging at Deb's hand. "They'll use you to get what they need and they'll kill you. You're trying to protect your brother but he's _using_ you because McKay's using him. This is what she does – she uses people to get what she wants and murders them." He glares at Hannah; she matches his expression but says nothing. He keeps speaking to Deb. "How long do you think she'll tolerate your place in Dexter's life once you've fulfilled your purpose? Three's a crowd, Detective."

He's not telling us anything we don't already know; Hannah hates Deb, wants me to herself and remains a dangerous threat to our family. But we've got this under control, and we just can't tell him that. I pull gently on Deb but she has something else to say first.

"Nothing's going to happen to me," she tells him quietly. "My brother looks after me."

"Your brother is under McKay's spell," Clayton responds. "He's already poisoned. Can he protect you from himself?"

None of us can answer that. He's wrong about Hannah's influence on me but he's not wrong about that last part. I've heard enough. Deb barely knows Clayton, and he's been a threat to our existence the whole time he's been in Miami, but it's because of what his impending death represents that she looks close to tears as she murmurs, "I'm so sorry," and lets me pull her up and away from him. He keeps reaching for her, keeps asking her for help, knowing instinctively that Debra is the only one worth asking. She can't take her eyes off him, won't stop apologising. Hannah watches with a closed expression as I lead my sister to the kitchenette. I take her to the sink, turn on the tap and thrust her hand under the water. I scrub the blood and scraps of flesh from her skin.

"Don't!" Clayton begs after us. "Don't just leave me to die! Detective! Please! Don't let them do this to me!"

His voice dissolves into wretched coughs. Deb closes her eyes to block the vision while I clean off her hand. I tug on her arm to make her turn away, but it doesn't help block the sounds of the man dying. In my peripheral vision I see Hannah crouch down beside Clayton and I hear her speak to him in a low voice, whether to taunt him or question him I'm not sure. I don't want to know. I focus on my sister. I turn off the water and dry her hand with the hem of my shirt. She's limp, worn-out, hopeless again. I hate it.

"What are we doing, Dexter?" she asks hollowly. I tell her we're surviving, and she asks, "At what price?" And I am reminded of what it costs her to be my sister, my accomplice, my life. If only she could get away from me. If only she could be free. But as long as I need her and she loves me, she can never be free. She has to stay, and I just have to make that as painless as possible for her. "I shouldn't have come here. I hate this, all of this. When do we get to be the good guys? When do we get to save someone instead of walking in and finding hookers bled dry on beds, watching crazy old ladies cry over their dying son, standing back and watching men die and doing _absolutely fucking nothing_ to help? Who the fuck are we?"

"I didn't know Hannah had poisoned him," I tell her quietly. "I did like we said, I wiped his computer and I packed up the files... but he knew it all anyway, it wasn't going to make a difference. If there was another way-"

"But there isn't. I know." Deb rubs her stomach self-consciously. "I feel sick. Why don't I listen to you? You told me to stay in the car."

"You're too fucking stubborn," I remind her, patting down her pockets for her gloves. She pulls them back on, trying not to listen as Clayton moans again. She clears her throat loudly; I wonder if it's just to avoid hearing. I take pity on her. She's trying so hard to be strong. "You go. Take one of the boxes to the car and wait there for me. I won't be long."

She nods and starts for the bedrooms. I turn back to Hannah and Clayton. Hannah is still crouched beside her victim, a venomous black widow leering over her helpless prey, but now she is craning her neck to see something on the other side of the armchair. Another glass tumbler, on the floor.

"Debra?" she asks suddenly. Behind me, Deb coughs. _No_... I spin back to her, potential horror paralysing my emotions and my body as I wait to know. She has also frozen mid-step. She has a hand over her mouth, and I don't breathe for the excruciatingly long second it takes her to draw that hand away where we can both see the watery redness on her gloved fingertips. It's like the sky crashes down on me. Not her, not this, anything but this. My breath leaves my lungs in a whoosh, and I see her do the same, only for her, more than just air seems to escape. The attempt at strength before vanishes; no, I realise, she's been looking weak for a few minutes now. She looks ready to collapse, but apparently I have already stridden back to her and I seize her face in both of my hands. Her gloves clasp my wrists and she looks straight into my eyes in total terror. For a long moment I can't speak. I can think of nothing but her, and all she is to me, and the poison deep inside her – literal poison, flesh-eating poison, not just the emotional poison that I have been to her – that will soon kill her.

"How much did you drink?" I demand finally. The terror I see reflected in her eyes courses through me also, and on its tail I feel the edge of the darkness that will consume me if I can't fix this promptly. For now the fear keeps me in the moment; I fight the scattering sensation that comes with losing control. I cannot lose control. I have to hold it together. For both of us. Even with this knowledge it's still a struggle. Clayton's impending death is not a representation of her demise at all. If I don't think of a solution his death _will be_ her death. "Deb! How much?"

"I... Only a little!" she stutters, shocked and frightened by this turn of events. Shocked, as I am, that neither of us thought of this previously; frightened of what it means. "Not even half of what he gave me. It was strong, stronger than I expected, burnt my throat going down... I wanted to stay sharp for when you wanted to leave." We both glance over as Hannah passes us with the tumbler on her way to the sink to empty it. If it was filled to where I expect, it seems she's only consumed a few sips. Deb frowns at Hannah. "You sneaky fucking whore, you weren't supposed to poison me again."

Hannah whirls back to her, hands on her hips while the tap continues to run. She seems more annoyed than offended. " _You_ weren't supposed to throw yourself into a trap intended for somebody else. You're remarkably dumb for an intelligent woman – I cannot believe you accepted a drink from a target of mine, knowing I was in the apartment before you and knowing how I dispatch my problem people. Honestly, Debra. Your brother's a serial killer – where's your intuitive mistrust for humanity?"

She shakes her head and goes back to what she was doing. Deb heaves and tries to keep in whatever has come up. Uncomfortably, she swallows. I can't tear my attention from her as I ask of Hannah, "What the fuck did you use?"

"Hydrochloric acid," she answers, finishing her task at the sink. I feel faint. Fucking _what_?

"What happened to plant extracts?" I ask, devastated, to which Hannah answers, "Your sister has no garden." Like it's obvious. Like it's her own fault.

I look back to Deb as she weakly voices, "Fucking acid. I'm so stupid." Beneath my hands I feel her begin to tremble, and to my horror her eyes brim with tears. Her voice falters when she says, "Karma. I deserve this. I'm going to die, aren't I? The same way Dad did."

That's an overwhelmingly horrifying thought for me right now, and for an extended second, I fall silent while fear and darkness battle it out in my mind. Vogel murdered our father by spiking his whiskey with his heart medication; Hannah has now twice poisoned Debra, once with medication dissolved in water, this time with acid in spirits. I say I love her but no love can survive a mistake like this; if Deb dies from this today, I will naturally have to tear Hannah's head and limbs from her body. But it won't bring me any content. It won't make me feel better. Deb would still be dead and it would still be over. An imagined hand slithers up my arm and I hear a soft, self-satisfied whisper: "Didn't I tell you this would happen? That you'd kill her in the end? Doesn't have to be your hand to be your fault."

I shrug Brian off and snarl, " _No_." But I only disagree with the finality of his words. I accept responsibility for the predicament. I know that Hannah is the one who planted the toxin but I still think of Deb's poisoning as only my fault. Of course it must be – she is my little sister, my responsibility, and so if this has happened to her it must be through my own failure to protect her. It's _my_ job to look after her.

But I cannot think of how I can.

My sister is yanked out of my hands and I am left standing in the kitchenette with empty hands poised in the air before me. Face set with determination, Hannah has grabbed Deb's arm and is dragging her down the hall. I see her thrust a glass of clear liquid into Deb's hands but Deb won't take it. They argue the whole way. I make to follow but I'm stopped by Brian.

"Just let it go," he soothes. "Hannah will make it quick. Something _you_ should have done, years ago. You _said_ ," he reminds me, stopping me again when I try to push past, "you wanted for her to be free. Well? Isn't this a convenient answer to your prayers? You don't even need to raise the blade yourself. She'll be safe from you forever. Free."

I grab the collar of Brian's shirt and jerk him aside. "I said I wished she could be free from me. I didn't say she _could_ be. Now get the hell out of my way."

And I chase Hannah and Deb down. Hannah takes my sister to the bathroom and forces her down onto her knees on the tiles. She reaches for Deb's jaw to hold her mouth open and, with her shaky broken hand, pours the cup's contents in, ignoring as Deb tries to fight her off. The gargling cries for help, the brutal imagery... I'm hit with powerful horror at the likeness to my dream, where along with Vogel, Hannah did exactly this.

"What are you doing?" I demand, afraid and confronted, as I swing through the doorway. I step forward to interfere. No one mercy-kills my little sister. Hannah shoulders me away with more strength than I expect, set on her task, and sits the glass in the sink. She flicks on the tap and it starts to fill. She has to release Deb to do all this, of course, and my sister wastes no time in getting up and launching herself at Hannah. But Hannah seems to expect this and ducks aside, catching Deb around the neck with her good arm and dragging her back to the floor, where they both kneel before the toilet, struggling to get the upper hand. Wincing with pain, Hannah shoves her injured hand into Deb's mouth. I'm shocked, and grab Hannah's shoulder.

"Don't!" Hannah snarls. Her tone is so severe that I am thrown off-guard and pay attention to her. "She needs this."

Deb makes an unintelligible sound of shock and distress as fingers reach down her throat; through her shirt I see her stomach muscles convulse reflexively in response. Hannah whips her hand away and pushes Deb towards the toilet's bowl. My sister grabs the porcelain edges and vomits, her whole body heaving. I hurry forward to catch her ponytail as it falls over her shoulder and into danger of being sicked on. All business, Hannah stands and leaves her there to attend to the overflowing glass in the sink. I sink down beside Deb and rub her back, hoping it comforts her at least a little.

Deb hasn't eaten dinner and didn't get down much of that water Hannah tipped into her mouth, so very little comes up. There's some blood, the spirits and the poison itself I suppose, but thankfully no 'chunks' of flesh like what we saw from Clayton. The acid hadn't gotten that far with her yet. I am grateful, dizzily grateful, for this mercy. Had she had more to drink... had she started as early as Clayton did...

Shaking, Deb pushes away from the toilet. I rip some toilet paper free of the roll for her and she wipes her mouth. She slams her fist down on the flush.

"What the motherfucking _fuck_ was that about?" she demands weakly, looking up at Hannah with a mixed look of bewilderment and unease. "I wanted that shit out, too. All you had to do was fucking _ask_."

"Of course," Hannah says smoothly. "I should have known, to stay as skinny as you are, you must have learnt at some point to vomit on request. How silly of me." She narrows her eyes condescendingly. "Like you would have listened to me."

"You could have given it a go," Deb shoots back. She clears her throat uncomfortably. "It burns." Hannah is not the least bit concerned.

"Drink," she orders, holding out the glass, but Deb refuses. "Now! It's water, you paranoid bitch." She tips the glass out into the toilet and shoves the empty glass at me. " _You_ fill it up then. Do it fast." I get up, go to the little sink and fill the cup, and Hannah continues, "You'll need about ten glasses full."

"What for?" Deb wants to know. She accepts the glass when it comes from me.

"For diluting the rest of the goddamn acid, what do you think? Drink," she urges irritably, and I nudge Deb's arm, starting to understand what Hannah is doing even if I don't understand her motives. Still uncertain and suspicious, Deb does as she's told. "Another one, quick," Hannah instructs, and I pour another. Deb drinks four glasses straight before she stops again.

"What's my prognosis with the acid out and all this water in?" she asks. "Am I still dying?"

I look to Hannah, too. I assumed that's what it meant but Deb's right to ask, because it's not a given.

"You'll want to stay away from rich foods, alcohol and oral medication, but you should survive," Hannah answers dismissively. I pause a moment to close my eyes and be gracious. That was close, too close. "You might like to see a doctor tomorrow. There's definitely damage done. But you can continue to be your usual delightful self for many years yet." She watches as I give Deb another full glass of water. She downs it. Hannah adds, "You're welcome, by the way."

"I'll thank you tomorrow if I wake up," Deb responds. She eyes Hannah suspiciously. "Why _did_ you save me?"

"Because I said I would," Hannah replies, as though this were obvious. "We had an agreement. To watch each other's backs, remember? Didn't think you'd call in your first favour so fast." She looks over to me while I pour the next glass. "Also because I knew Dexter would have blamed me if you went and died like that."

"Well," I remind her, too relieved by what she's just done for Deb to be angry with Hannah about what could have been, "it _would_ have been your fault." But I'm not mad. Hannah's saving of Deb after almost killing her is as meaningful as Deb's rescuing of me after she almost drowned me. The near-kill doesn't eliminate the importance of the second choice – the choice to save. I am so grateful to Hannah right now. Right now I can easily agree that I love her. She just saved _my_ life as much as Deb's or her own.

Hannah rolls her eyes. "I knew you'd see it like that. So predictable."

"Hannah." I step over to her and kiss her cheek. She is surprised by the tenderness and spontaneous affection. "Thankyou." And I hug her tightly.

"You don't need to thank me," she says after a moment. She pulls away to look at me. "If she'd died I assumed I'd be next."

"It would have been unforgiveable," I confirm, which hurts her. It tells her that which I've been denying: that I love Deb more than her. But I add, "Saving her is... impossible to repay. You didn't have to and you did it anyway. Because I wanted it. I'm going to owe you forever."

"You looked like your world was ending," she confesses.

"It was. But you saved the world, Hannah."

"I suppose that makes me your hero," Hannah replies shyly, to which Deb groans and comments on how sickening we are. "Anyway," Hannah says, wiping her hands on her shorts, "crisis averted, back to business. Debra, since you're apparently an expert at it, you'll want to eject all that water you just drank to wash out the last of the acid. It's diluted but it'd be better out than in." She turns back to me. "What do you want to do about _him_?"

We can hear Clayton's agonised groaning from where we are. Deb looks up at me, eyes pleading, as I follow Hannah out. I pause in the doorway and withdraw something from my pocket. When she sees it she relaxes, still upset but accepting my solution as the best compromise. I go with Hannah to the living room and find Clayton halfway to the kitchen, a smeared trail of blood from his mouth marking his pitiful progress. I notice his phone and gun on the counter – Hannah must have put those there when she washed out the glass. I was too focussed on Deb to notice.

"Go grab the case files from the bed," I instruct Hannah. "I'll take care of him."

She leaves me there without a word. I go to Clayton.

"Dexter," he gasps now as I kneel beside him, "your sister. McKay poisoned her. Next it could be your son. She doesn't care about you or your family. You can't trust her."

"I know," I admit in a low voice, going through my pocket for what I showed to Deb. "I've got it under control. Don't worry about anything. Just relax. I'm going to help you."

He grabs my wrist. His mouth dripping with vomited blood, his eyes wild, face pale and sweaty, he looks like a rabid zombie or something equally nightmarish. He says, "Hannah McKay is a serial murderer and a sociopath. She always gets what she wants. She will destroy you."

I shush him gently and inject my syringe into his neck. The tranquiliser floods his blood stream and puts him out. I don't use the whole dose; it isn't necessary. Max Clayton's tense, shaking body goes limp and his eyelids fall shut. His breaths come more evenly. Blood dribbles from his lip to the floor. He'll still be dead very soon, but at least now he won't feel it coming for him. Like my sister said, this is one of the good guys. Even dying, he is trying to save me, trying to help me see the light and get rid of Hannah to save my family from her. He doesn't deserve the fate Hannah served him but he got it, and at least now he can go peacefully, with some dignity.

"Sorry," I whisper to him, though he is past hearing me, and I stand and go back to help Hannah.

I find her in the file-pile room, but she is not collecting files. She has her bag of jars again and is unpacking them onto the carpet. Behind me, I can hear Deb throwing up again, all water this time. "What are you doing?" I ask Hannah. She glances at me over her shoulder as I come in. "What's the blood for?"

"It was _your_ plan," she reminds me, slinging the near-empty bag back over her shoulder. "You tell me."

"My plan?" But as soon as I ask, I remember. "To kill you."

"I saved your stupid sister and you said you love me, so I hope it's all still make-believe," Hannah comments, trying to disguise her worry. I manage a smile. If I were smarter, like the deputy marshal is encouraging me to be, I wouldn't leave it at make-believe. I'd do it for real, like I did with Brian. But unlike Brian, I'm sure, Hannah can be controlled. Hannah can be made to respect Deb's place in my life. She _did_ just save Deb's life, and though it was because she neglected to mention her plan to us that Deb's life needed to be saved at all, it makes me feel like things really can work out for the three of us.

"You did good, bringing the blood," I admit. "We can plant it, make it look like you came here and poisoned Clayton but he injured you in the process."

"Where should I pour it?" she asks, starting to unscrew a lid. I stop her.

"We don't _pour_ it," I correct, and realise I'll need to do this step myself. "There's an art to blood."

"And you're the artist," she notes dryly. She gestures welcomingly to the jars. "All yours."

We get to work turning the apartment into a crime scene for one, rather than for three. Hannah takes Deb's glass and washes it in hot water, scrubbing hard to remove fingerprints and DNA. With my gloves, I put it back on the silver tray so it looks like he was drinking alone. I bleach the inside of the toilet, wipe Hannah's prints from the tap. No need for the forensics team to wonder what she was doing in here. Deb watches me work, leaning exhaustedly against the tiled wall.

"It's so quiet," she comments eventually, voice dull. "Did you kill him?"

I finish with the toilet and wipe down anything Deb's skin may have touched. "You told me not to."

I have Hannah disorder and throw about the paperwork in the other room while I retrieve the knife and flashlight and hide them in one of the case boxes. I ask her to plant her fingerprints all over the laptop. I scour the apartment for anything else I missed. When I am satisfied that all evidence of my and my sister's presence here is eliminated, I go back for the jars. Deb gathers the strength and curiosity to come after me and see what I'm doing.

"Gross," she notes. "What are you going to do with all that?"

" _Not_ just tip it all out, apparently," Hannah sniffs. She takes a few sheafs of paper and tosses them haphazardly across the room.

"Well, obviously," Deb answers, annoyed. Their bickering is familiar, but I sense a new, underlying respect between them. Deb is surprised that Hannah saved her life; Hannah is relieved that _I'm_ relieved enough by her part in saving Deb that I don't hate her. It's an extremely shaky respect and the slightest breeze could blow it over, but they are both meeting the expectations of their agreement to hate each other eternally. "What story are you painting, Dex?"

"There's really only one viable option," I say, tilting the jar I hold to see the blood swill tantalisingly. "Gunshot wound." I smile at Hannah; her turning up threw a wrench into my plans, but the blood might turn things around enough to fix all of our problems. "With this much blood and no body, it has to seem that Clayton shot you and injured you quite badly, but you were still strong enough to escape. When you don't turn up at any hospitals and no one sights you ever again, the case will go cold and there will be speculation you died. It'll just go unanswerable."

"Good." Hannah smiles back. "If you start on the blood art I'll go and take one of the bullets out of the gun."

"Uh..." Deb looks at me. She's thinking exactly what I'm thinking. "That's really not going to cut it."

"The gun will need to be fired," I explain to Hannah. "There needs to be striations on the bullet to match with that gun, and gunshot residue on the shooter's hands to confirm he was the one who shot you."

"So we fire the gun, everyone in the building hears it, we bolt?" Hannah asks. I shrug.

"Something like that."

I take Deb with me to the living room (where she astutely ignores the freshly dead marshal) and start dripping the blood trail that should imply where Hannah was standing where she was supposedly shot and how she walked to the door. I am generous with my drippings and it looks convincing but I have immense trouble creating the illusion on the wall. The reason I have a job is that blood spatters are unique creations of their circumstances – without the actual circumstances to create it, I'm unable to falsify the spray, the splats, the patterning. I'm exhausted; I can barely think straight, let alone artfully design a crime scene to the persuasiveness that is required of me. I've adjusted scenes before, or told lies about blood that is already there, but this is impossible. I sigh and stop. But I can't stop. The blood is all over the floor, Hannah's prints are everywhere, the files are a mess and Clayton is dead. There is nothing to do but finish setting up this cover story.

"She's not going to go for it," Deb says, recognising the problem and seeing the same, only solution I can see. "There's no way." I agree fully.

"She won't go for what?" Hannah asks suspiciously, walking out of the bedroom.

"I can't fake this," I admit. "The blood. The spatter. The floor is fine but the wall, where there should be spray from your injury... and a lot of it... I can't. It's not possible."

"So what do we do?" Hannah presses. She drops the last of the boxes on the armchair beside Clayton's cooling body. She's working so efficiently, being a team player despite that she hates half of the team, despite that the half of the team she does like broke her wrist. I feel bad for what I'm about to say.

"If we want the evidence to say you were shot... you'll have to be shot."

Hannah blinks. "Oh."

"And I said you wouldn't go for it," Deb inserts tactlessly. Hannah stares at her. There's a long, long moment of silence between us.

"Alright, fine," Hannah says finally, surprising everyone. "I want this over with. If I have to hurt a bit to have them stop hunting me... Fine." She comes to stand before me. "Nothing worthwhile is easy, right?"

"It'll hurt quite a bit," I say uneasily. I'm pretty sure Hannah is only accepting in response to my sister's challenge, and doesn't really understand what she's agreeing to. Deb snorts.

"Don't sugar-coat it, Dexter," she says. "It'll fucking _cane_. But if we don't do it, the evidence won't match up and the investigation will go awry. And we'll all be in the crosshairs."

"Where are you going to shoot me?" Hannah asks of me, unconsciously running a nervous hand across her abdomen. I shake my head and lightly stroke her right arm, the one I twisted and fractured.

"Through-and-through, just below the shoulder," I say. "It's in line with vital organs so the trajectory will show you got hit somewhere here," I slide my hand through the air across the front of her chest, from shoulder to shoulder, "and the blood spatter will indicate the same. The blood on the floor will be what cements the decision that you were hit here," I move my hand back over the centre of her chest, "which will give only a very short life expectancy for you. It will seem unlikely that you survived at all. The focus will move to hospitals and after-hours doctor's surgeries. When they never find you..."

"I'll be dead." Hannah tries to smile at the thought of her days of running being over. "Okay." She inhales deeply. "I trust you. Where do I stand?"

I use the initial positioning of Clayton's body to determine where he ought to have been standing when he supposedly shot Hannah, and arrange Hannah accordingly. She stands and waits while Deb brings me the gun. She unloads it to check the number of bullets and reloads it for me, flicking off the safety. As I take it I notice how unsteady my hand is. I think of yesterday, the shooting in the hall at Vogel's. I hesitate.

"What's wrong?" Hannah asks. I look between her and my sister. I give Deb back the gun. Hannah's eyes widen in realisation. She starts forward. "No! No way-"

"I could miss," I say, moving aside and letting Deb step into position. "I could really kill you if I'm not careful, or I could waste a round on the wall. Deb's a good shot. She won't miss." Hannah stops, thinks about it. I take her arm and walk her back to where she's meant to be waiting. "Trust me."

Hannah winds her arms around my neck and kisses me boldly. She pulls away and says, "I trust you. It's her I don't trust."

"You two had an agreement, remember?" I remind her. "She's not going to kill you. Are you?" I ask of my sister. Playfully, cruelly, she shrugs. I glare at her. She sighs.

"No, I'm not going to fucking kill you," she acquiesces. "Dexter said I'm not allowed. And you did just save my life. After this, after we get you out, I owe you nothing."

Hannah is liking the situation less and less. She takes her arms from my neck and takes my hand in hers.

"Okay," she says again. She smiles at me hopefully. "Stay with me?"

I smile back awkwardly – she'll like this bit even less – and Deb says, "Dex, out of the way." I have to explain to Hannah that I can't stand with her and hold her hand while my sister shoots her. She has to do it all alone. I cannot be near enough to block the blood spray or there will be proof someone else was here. I watch as helpless fear fills Hannah's eyes. Yes, she is a survivor, but unlike Deb and I, who have spent a lifetime suffering, Hannah is not accustomed to actually _hurting_ to get what she wants. She is not toughed by life and work as we are. I step away to stand beside my sister.

"I love you," Hannah calls after me, afraid. I smile.

"I know. Me, too. But you aren't going to die."

"Not tonight," Deb corrects. She brings the gun up and I adjust her level to match Clayton's height. She asks of Hannah, "You ready?"

"Try not to enjoy this too much," Hannah answers coldly. Deb smirks.

"Oh, I'm trying," she says. "I'm really, really trying."

But she doesn't shoot. Her aim shifts repeatedly and I gather the trajectory is moving from Hannah's arm to her chest and back again. I notice and turn fully to her. Was it a mistake to give her the gun, tell her to point it at someone she despises and assume she'd do the right thing? In her eyes I see him again, poisoning her, encouraging her to make the selfish choice that will bring her momentary triumph and a lifetime of regret. She learned this from me, and I'm seeing it in her more and more as I drag her with me on my path of destructiveness and doom. I want to shake her but can't know when she will pull the trigger. It's too dangerous.

"What are you doing?" Hannah asks suspiciously, noting the shifting aim of the gun. "You're shaky. I thought you're meant to be the better shot."

"She is," I insist, and look back to Deb. She isn't looking at me. She's transfixed by her target. I see in her eyes how easily she could kill Hannah right now. How much better she expects her life will be without the fugitive around. How upset she is about Clayton's unnecessary death and Hannah's cold indifference. I understand. But it isn't the way. This way destroys the Debra I love and I don't want to see that again.

"It would be best for everyone if the investigators found a body," she tells Hannah, and chooses a spot to aim for.

"Deb," I say hurriedly, "don't listen to him."

She doesn't understand. "To who?" She narrows her eyes. I can't grab the gun, I can't push her or interfere without risking all our lives. So instead I lean across so my chin slots onto her shoulder the same way hers fits onto mine.

"Don't change," I ask of her, as she fires.


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. What I DID own at the time of writing this chapter was a pile of chocolate, shortbread biscuits and other Christmassy delights from my students that I slowly ate my way out of when school finished for the year. I know you're all jealous. But admittedly, it's all gone now. 
> 
> Author's notes: I loved writing that chapter; so many parts I really enjoyed, especially Hannah and Deb hurting one another to save each other, themselves and Dexter. This one is one I have been visualising for some time and I hope you all like it, too. The song that came on while I edited this chapter was Broken by Seether, featuring Amy Lee. And it fit so well that I decided to name it Song of the Chapter. I think it was more for the sound than for the lyrics, but the lyrics work, too. The violin-y chords at the bridge part of the song match the pacing of the same section of this chapter (from about halfway). Hope you enjoy this: longest chapter so far.

The single gunshot is ear-splittingly loud from this tiny distance and knowing it's coming doesn't stop me from jumping back from my sister, startled. And even that sound is outdone by Hannah's scream of pain. Blood sprays from her wound all across the door and wall behind her and the bullet slams into the plaster. Still screaming incoherently, she collapses slowly to the floor, good arm wrapped across her body, clutching uselessly at the hole in her arm. Bright red spills over her fingers and runs down her arms, onto her lap, staining her clothes and dripping thickly onto the carpet.

Deb lowers the gun. I can't tell from her expression what she's thinking.

"You didn't kill her," I comment breathlessly. She turns her gaze on me. Brian is still lurking in those big hazel eyes but even as I watch she fights him down and she is flooded once again with _Deb_.

"You said I wasn't allowed. But there's still a full round in here if you agree I made a mistake," she reminds me. I am so relieved to see her returned safely. I flash her a grateful look, but she's looking over at Clayton. Knowing what comes next. The cover-up. "Dex..."

She doesn't want to touch a dead person that she unwillingly assisted in killing. I extend a hand.

"You can be the good guy this time," I offer. She raises an eyebrow at me.

"Gee, thanks," she says sarcastically, handing over the pistol. "Because looking after _her_ makes me feel so fucking good."

But she understands. She knows it's her better option. We both burst into action. Deb peels off her gloves and I take them. She bolts to Hannah and pulls her upright onto her knees as she struggles to cry, scream and breathe at the same time. I run to Clayton's still form and stroke her GSR-powdered gloves across his hand and fingers, wiping the residue back in the direction it would have blasted had he really fired the gun. I press his limp fingers to the trigger and handle, and lay the weapon near the chair he started in. It looks like he stood and shot her while in the midst of his suffering, and has dropped the gun as she escaped; the blood says he then collapsed, tried to crawl back to his phone and died somewhere along the way.

Deb pulls a few of Hannah's yellow-blonde hairs from her head and drops them onto the floor. "You... You..." is all Hannah manages between hysterical, gasping sobs. There's blood everywhere. I hardly need the jars but we want to create the illusion Hannah's dying, so I empty the glass jars of cold blood onto her chest and arm so it can drip naturally from her body as though it were flowing from her. It serves the crime scene well – for both women it lifts the revulsion level several points. Deb stares at me with her mouth open in disgust. Hannah's shattered nerves can't take it and, horrified, she screams louder and tries to scoot away from me. Deb has to hold onto her.

"Come _on_ ," Deb hisses over Hannah's incessant shrieks. She tugs on the other's shoulders to get her onto her feet. Hannah seems not to want my sister touching her but can't get the words out over her cries. "Everyone in the whole fucking building will have heard that."

I throw the gloves, the jars and Hannah's bag into the Speltzer box. "Done. Let's go." Deb drags Hannah to the door while I stack up the boxes and lift them up. I nod and Deb grabs Hannah's wrist and directs it onto the doorknob. Her handprint needs to be on there to show she left this way. Slippery with blood both fresh and old, she takes a few seconds to work the doorknob. When it opens, Deb hooks her ankle around the door and kicks it back. She shakes Hannah roughly to get her to listen over her own uncontrollable sobs. She leans Hannah through the door to look for witnesses and to shout, tearfully, haltingly, "Stay away from your door and there won't be a problem." We wait a second. Listening intently, I'm sure I hear furniture being dragged against a door in the next apartment. Perfect. I nod again, and we hurry out.

Deb is strong but she's still shaky from her misadventure with hydrochloric acid and vomiting blood, and Hannah is a burden. Three times she almost falls down the stairs and takes Deb with her. Gloveless, Deb is loath to touch the handrail, so when Hannah stumbles she instead pushes both of their weight sidewards into the rail to steady them. Carrying three awkwardly-sized boxes, I am quite useless whenever this happens. Hannah sobs and gasps and blubbers the whole way, bleeding everywhere. I walk behind them and am careful to avoid stepping in the blood trail. Because I'm not really here.

Outside the building, Deb has a harsh word with Hannah about keeping quiet now and, hating both of us and everything else about the world I'm sure, Hannah tries to do as she's told. The shock and pain she's in is a type of shock and pain I'm quite certain she's never experienced before – she's been stabbed, yes, but looking at her reaction to the gunshot I'm guessing this is a lot worse. She is in a great deal of pain and is trying extremely hard to control her distress.

"I don't..." Hannah attempts through shaky sobs. "I don't want... you touching me." She doesn't have the strength to pull away or to keep up with us if she isn't supported, but I see it's important to her that Deb knows anyway. My sister rolls her eyes and keeps directing her forward. There's no one around so we head straight through the shadowy alleys to my car.

"I can think of about fifty people right now that I'd rather be touching than _you_ ," Deb shoots back. "Every single one of them is more grateful and less whiney in my head. And less bleedy." She looks irritably over herself as we come in sight of the car. "Another fucking outfit for the garbage can."

"We'll burn that one," I correct. I pause, balance the boxes on my raised knee and dig in my pocket for the remote. I unlock the door as Deb and Hannah get close to it, and Deb opens the back door. She pushes Hannah inside and stands back. I come over with the boxes, noting uneasily how deeply blood-stained my sister is. I've seen her bleed before, of course, as recently as this morning, and this isn't even her blood, but it's unsettling, regardless of whether you're a normal person or a socially inept serial killer, to see someone you like to have alive drenched in blood.

"I know you poured an extra helping onto her," Deb comments now, still looking into the car uncertainly, "but there's a fuckload of blood. She's not a fucking haemophiliac or some shit, is she?"

Inside the car, Hannah has gone back to crying inconsolably. I open the front passenger door and put the boxes on the floor.

"No," I assure my sister. "It just needs to be stemmed. Pressure on the wound." I demonstrate, with my hands in the air, pressing down on a bleed. Deb is mortified by the idea of having to literally hold Hannah's blood inside her.

"No, I think fucking not," she disagrees, backing up a step. "My babysitting duties are officially complete. I carried her down here."

"You're the one who shot her," I argue, but we're interrupted by a skittering noise further down the alley. We both turn our heads to look, alert and ready for confrontation. In the gloom it's impossible to see far. No further sound comes. Still, I'm uneasy. I start towards the origin of the noise, squinting. Deb follows a few steps behind me. Neither of us is armed. I don't like any of this. In the shadows ahead, well out of viewing distance, I half-imagine a slim, slinking figure shifting from one shady nook to the next, silently sliding further and further away. Is someone there? Watching? Escaping? Brian? Or am I losing my mind to exhaustion and adrenaline overload?

"We should go," I note, and start backing up. Deb turns tail and runs back to the car. She automatically goes to the opposite door and I reluctantly toss her the keys. I have been avoiding letting her drive all day, maybe some kind of control thing, maybe a simple I'm-worried-about-you-you're-not-well thing, maybe a fear-of-letting-her-be-in-charge thing after everything that went down last night, and even now I'm not happy about it. But I trust her. It's laughable by this point that a few hours ago I walked in on her in a dressing room to accuse her of betraying me to Clayton. She jumps into the driver's seat and starts the engine. I throw myself through the open back door and slam it shut after me, and Deb takes off.

Hannah is bleeding profusely, like Deb mentioned before. She is thrown across the seat by Deb's first sharp corner and can't bring herself to sit up. I shuffle across the back seat to attend to her. Behind the wheel, my sister is a danger to everybody, speeding through the streets and struggling to remove her blood-soaked shirt. I'm already regretting allowing her to drive.

"Watch the road," I snap at her. She tugs the shirt over her head and throws it back at me. She clicks her fingers at me impatiently.

"Give me yours before you fuck it all up with her blood," she orders. "Use mine to stop the bleeding."

I unbutton my shirt, the outer layer of my clothing, and lean through the gap between the front seats. I drop my shirt onto the passenger seat and stretch myself right through to reach the glove box. It would look strange to someone looking through our window, Deb driving topless and me horizontal through the middle of the car. I grab out the first aid kit and pull back to my seat. I do as Deb suggested and bundle the shirt she gave me into a ball to press on Hannah's wound. I take a moment to actually look at the damage. Deb is an expert marksman. The shot is clean and neat, through-and-through the flesh a few inches below the shoulder. Hannah is in agony but it could have been much worse, if I'd been the one to pull the trigger.

I pull her upright and against me. Her makeup is smeared all down her cheeks and blood has gotten everywhere, in her hair, on the end of her nose somehow, up the side of her neck. The first aid kit is seriously depleted by my self-care last week after my altercation with Vogel and a teacup. There's not much I can do with its contents until I can decrease the blood flow. I maintain a constant pressure.

"It hurts so much," Hannah whimpers, the uncontrollable sobs and screams subsided for now. "I didn't know..."

"I know it hurts a lot," I agree. "I'm sorry it had to happen. But the scene was perfect."

"It should be, I was fucking shot!" Hannah exclaims, and chokes on fresh tears. She kicks the seat in front of her. "By your fucking bitch of a sister!"

"You're _welcome_ ," Deb spits, glaring back at her in the rear-view mirror. "You probably feel a little like I did when I was poisoned, thrown onto the bathroom floor and almost choked to death... in order to have my life saved." She shakes her head and moves her gaze back to the road. "Karma's a bitch, isn't she? I'm so glad you _finally_ fucking met her."

Hannah screams a string of obscenities at Deb that would sound more fitting coming from Deb herself, with a general message of 'be quiet', soon dissolving once again into unintelligible, tearful mumbling. She leans miserably into me and cries heavily into my shoulder. I half-heartedly scold Deb for her unnecessary nastiness, but I can't really be bothered. It's not like she'd heed me and it's not like it's unfair or incorrect. It's just not needed right now and my sister and I have differing opinions on that, and in an argument I won't win, so I don't go there.

"Where am I going?" Deb asks when we stop at a set of lights. She taps her fingers, brownish-red and tacky with drying blood, on the steering wheel. For a moment I am stumped. When I relinquished the keys to her I must have assumed that she'd come up with all the rest. "Don't either of you say my place. I don't want her there anymore, and Elway already thinks she's there."

"It's not safe there, for any of us, as long as he's staking the place out," I agree immediately. I reposition the utterly saturated shirt over Hannah's open arm. "My apartment is out, too, after that anonymous tip today that indicated Hannah McKay was taking a stroll five blocks from there."

"Genius," Deb comments sarcastically. I ignore her. It was necessary. She lets her foot off the brake as traffic starts to move again. Hannah sniffles pitifully. "Well, pick somewhere. We need to get _her_ the hell out of sight. The neighbours will already have called the police. You and I will probably get a call soon to attend to the scene – to which I will say a friendly 'no, fuck off, I'm on leave' – and once it's determined Clayton's been killed by Hannah and she's out bleeding all over the place Angel will have all the hospitals and doctors checked out, and when he finds jack-shit his next point of call will be your place. Then my place. Because he loves the shit out of us, but he's not fucking stupid."

"I need a doctor," Hannah mumbles despondently. "I know we said-"

"You need a stiff fucking drink, a bandage and a shower," Deb disagrees, "and if those aren't good enough for you, I'll take them. Dex, my bag's on the floor." I assume this is intended as a direction rather than as an observation, so I reach my cleanest hand to my feet and dig through the open handbag. "Medicate away."

I withdraw the pillboxes of the painkillers, anti-inflammatories and antibiotics I bought her yesterday. That gives me an idea. I direct Deb to the pharmacy I got these from.

"That same doctor I took you to this afternoon," I remind her, and she changes lanes to be able to take the next turn. "There's a drugstore attached. Pretty sure it was twenty-four hour."

"Should we be showing our guilty faces at the same place twice in a day?"

"I need bandages, padding, medical tape... More than what I've got here, or what you've got at your place."

I tip the correct dosages into Hannah's waiting, shivery left hand and go back through the bag for water. I offer her the bottle and she hesitates. In the mirror, Deb narrows her eyes.

"Is there a problem?" she asks coldly. "It's not _poisoned_ , I hope."

Irritated, Hannah accepts the water and swallows the pills. I screw the lid back on and toss the bottle back at my feet. It bounces out of the bag and I have to reach down to move it. The back of my hand brushes something familiar, and I sit up with the stolen fedora. We pull up at another intersection and I fix the hat atop Hannah's conspicuous golden hair in case anyone glances in the window. No harm in disguising her.

Deb keeps looking in the rear-vision mirror.

"What is it?" I ask. She shakes her head.

"Nothing, I think. There was this dark car and I thought I saw it twice, following us... but I slowed down and it got closer and it turned left. I'm just being paranoid."

"Doesn't sound like you at all," I say, and the half-amused, half-annoyed look I get in response lightens my mood.

A few blocks from the pharmacy, in a quiet, dingy street, Deb pulls over and she and I step out of the car. We use the rest of the water in the bottle and a towel we find in my car's trunk to clean Hannah's blood from Deb's arms, hands, chest and neck, and then she slides her arms into the sleeves of my shirt and buttons it up. There's nothing we can do about the blood stains in her jeans but at least it's black denim so it's not all that evident, at least not on first glance.

We drive to the pharmacy. I wait with Hannah in the car. Dressed in an oversized shirt that is clearly not her own, eyes hooded from many nights of limited sleep, exhaustion emanating from her like an aura, Deb blends right in with the other night-time clientele at the twenty-four hour chemist. She's quickly back out with supplies, including energy drinks for her and me, and then we're driving again. We drop by her house, and she jogs inside to get mine and Hannah's bags. I use this minute of stillness to start dressing Hannah's wound. It's much more open than the cuts of Deb's I tended to yesterday and it really needs stitches, but I'll have to do that myself. There will be no paramedics this time, although Hannah would probably be a nicer patient for them than my sister was. When Deb sits back behind the wheel she needs a destination. I finally know one. I don't know why I didn't think of it weeks ago. I don't know why I didn't drop Hannah there the minute she landed in Miami. I don't know now why I needed to involve Deb like I did at all.

"That's the middle of freaking nowhere," Deb argues, but puts the car into gear and backs onto the road again. She's right, it is, and that's why it's perfect. "How do you know this traveller's centre is going to be empty? God, why am I even asking? Of course you know which creepy-ass hovels are abandoned and available for use for unsavoury purposes."

"I hid Lumen there," I explain. "It's safe. It's out of the way. It's got running water, bunks..."

"It's in the _wilderness_ ," Hannah notes unhappily. "It's _miles_ away."

"It'll be good for you, all that fresh air," Deb insists. "You can probably stock up on lots of unusual plant poisons you just don't find in your average suburban garden."

Hannah ignores her except for a nasty glance she can't help but cast over. "I'll be so far away from you," she appeals to me, getting upset again. "You won't be able to get to me if something happens, if someone comes for me."

"No one's going to find you out there," I assure her, but Deb is quick to disagree. She's looking in the mirrors again.

"I swear, I swear to God that's the same car," she insists. I twist in my seat to look out the back window. Distantly I see a dark car overtake a red one, either innocently or to keep us in sight. I can't be sure. But if my sister is right, and it's the same car she saw after leaving Clayton's... I should know better than to believe in coincidences by this point, I suppose. Deb eyes the car as it slows in its lane, trying, I assume, to keep a distance. "It's Elway. Fuck, I hate this guy! I've _been_ in his fucking car and I chased him to it last night – does he really think I don't recognise it by now?" She pulls over to test him out. He slows, hesitant, and drives on past to avoid arousing our suspicions. His windows are too tinted for me to see his stupid slimy face as he passes, but he does pull up further along the road where he can still see us and wait for our next move. Caught.

"Did he just see us leave a murder scene?" Hannah asks, voice high with panic. I scoff.

"Second time in as many days. We'll be alright. No one listens to him. Deb," I say, leaning between the seats to address my sister, "act natural. Pretend like you haven't seen him. Just drive out of town and head for the shelter."

"He'll follow us," Deb points out.

"Let him." I crack open a can of energy drink and take a swig. It helps.

"He'll catch us," Hannah says worriedly.

"Let him try," I respond. Deb looks back at me. I offer her the can and she drinks. "He's followed us since we left mine. He hasn't called us in. He can't know Clayton's dead, or he'd have tried already to confront us. All he knows is we walked out of Clayton's apartment with Hannah McKay bleeding all over us – he doesn't know what we've done with Clayton, he doesn't know if Hannah's our friend or hostage, he doesn't know shit – and he's curious. He wants Hannah for himself. He wants to be the one to bring her in. So let him follow us. The longer he stays intrigued the longer it'll take him to report anything. As long as he thinks he can take us he won't hand us over and risk losing his fat paycheck to Miami Metro."

"Fine." Deb flicks on the indicator and waits for a break in traffic to merge back onto the road. "I think you're insane but you've gotten us out of worse in the past few days." It's another way of saying she trusts my judgement. She gives me back the drink. "I hope you can come up with a more solid solution to getting him off our tail than 'just drive' by the time we get there."

I have already done so. For near on an hour we drive, mostly in silence, and the dark-coloured car still follows. Once we are out of town it becomes more evident that it is tailing us. There are no other cars for Elway to hide behind and there is very little else out here to be heading to, so though he keeps way back, we are under no illusions as to his intention. Still, we pretend not to notice him. Deb doesn't pick up any speed or make any evasive manoeuvres. Not that there is anywhere to evade to. This road is long, empty and barren.

Hannah's tearfulness subsides into shock. I clean and strap her gunshot wound and wrap it tightly with a bandage. Awkwardly in the back of a moving car, I create a sling for her to relax her ruined right arm in. Between the wrist I twisted and fractured and the upper arm my sister shot, we Morgans have not been nice to Hannah tonight. That said, she did interfere with and complicate my plans for Clayton and she did poison my Deb, so I suppose fair's fair.

We get no calls. Our phones are all silent. This I find odd, because I really expected that someone would have tried to get me out to Clayton's apartment tonight while things are still fresh – most homicides need to wait for the working day for forensic analysis but a deputy marshal dead in your precinct is something of a special case to any police station, and considering the usual response time for 911 calls regarding gun-related disturbances, it can be safely assumed the first responding officer has already found the trail of blood to Clayton's open door and the bloodbath of his motel apartment's living room, and, of course, Clayton himself. It's clearly a task for the homicide team. Angel, our lieutenant, will have been made aware. His first step would be to call his team – Deb included, and considering the importance of the case, probably Masuka and I to try getting started as soon as possible – but this hasn't happened. Why? Thinking back along the train of events that would lead to us being called, the only point at which I believe things may have gone astray is right at the beginning. The initial emergency call. What if no one reported the disturbance? Surely _someone_ heard the shot. Surely someone overheard us all arguing. Deb yelled at me; Hannah screamed when I hurt her and again when Deb shot her; Clayton raised his voice several times. I think of the neighbour who dragged furniture against his door when Hannah called for anyone listening to stay out of it. Did that person _really_ not call the police after all that? If so, I was clearly in the right to worry for the fate of humanity.

"Is this the turnoff for the shelter?" Deb asks tiredly, pointing ahead. Mucking around with my phone, I lean through the gap again to look.

"No, that's the next one, but take it anyway," I say, and she does. Elway follows. "This road leads to the camping ground, and the start of the tracks. We can lose Elway in the forest."

"This is such a stupid idea," Deb mutters. "Camping ground? As in, all full of tents and families and marshmallows?"

"Yes, camping ground, as in, abandoned and closed following a bridge collapse that you'll want to keep an eye out for." I show Deb the short news article on my phone. She barely glances. I point to an uphill turn up ahead, a windy dirt track through the trees. "Follow that. Pull up when the road-"

"Road is too strong a word for that."

"Stop when the _track_ falls away and we'll take the rest of the way on foot."

Keeping a distance, Elway lowers his lights as he starts after us into the forest. We continue driving leisurely as though we have no fear of being followed or caught. I direct my sister using the map on my phone along the winding forest track until we reach the bridge. Wide enough for one car only, it was constructed to ferry vehicles across a narrow, rocky stream that is set quite deep in the landscape. The water is fast and frothy and I can see why the campsite's rangers would want to discourage people from trying to cross it by building the bridge. The ground declines sharply away and falls quite a way before the water level is reached, and the rocks appear sharp and large. The loss of this bridge, part of the only track to the camping ground, has eliminated any chance of vacationers reaching the site up ahead, which is highly convenient for me.

Deb kills the engine while I bundle Hannah out of the backseat. She is weak and miserly but no longer crying or shuddery. I pack the flashlight into Hannah's bag.

"Throw in the pills," Deb says, and when I hesitate, reminds me, "I only have half a fucking stomach thanks to the acid cocktail I drank, so I won't be taking them, will I? Burn a damn hole through my organs."

I still don't like that Deb won't be taking the medication her doctor prescribed her but I see her argument. Hydrochloric acid poisoning can take days to kill a victim, if the dosage is right. We got the shit out of Deb but we really have no idea how much damage Hannah's poisoning will have done, and anything harsh like oral medication could do much more harm than good at this point. Better to be safe than sorry, of course, and nothing would make me sorrier than to have my sister die because I tried too hard to love her and forced her to take medicine that her body couldn't take.

I sling Hannah's handbag over her and assist her down the slope to the stream. Deb slides down after us.

"I feel naked without my gun," she admits. "I don't like this. He'll be armed."

"He can kill us out here, and no one will know," Hannah realises, quickly becoming distressed again. I assure her this will not happen. Elway wants his money. He won't kill her, and he's not me. Killing people he is annoyed with is not his mind's first response to difficult situations.

"We'll be alright," I insist, and start picking my way over the wet, pointy rocks that stick out of the water. "Be careful and don't fall in."

I am slow and careful. Balance is everything. The water rushes over my feet, fast and cold, and threatens to sweep me away and slam me into ever sharper and more worrisome rocks. Deb lightly pushes Hannah ahead to start across the rocks. I point out the rocks that were the flattest supports for my feet. I am two thirds of the way across and extend my hand back to Hannah. Deb has her hands on Hannah's shoulders, and Hannah's good arm is around Deb's waist for support. My sister is sure-footed despite her tiredness but Hannah's strappy shoe slides on the mossy stone and the rushing water catches her ankle. I watch in high-speed horror as Hannah's leg gives out from beneath her and she tumbles down to her knees, pulling Debra off-balance. It all happens quickly. Hannah falls into the frigid waters and drags Deb down with her. Both shriek with shock at the suddenness and the cold as Hannah's lower half splashes into the stream. Deb releases Hannah as she falls and saves herself from broken bones by grabbing onto the rock. The water buffets them both. It rushes over Deb's wrists and lower legs, over Hannah's lower body up to her waist. It's not deep here but it's fast enough to be frightening. I step back to them, scared of watching them get washed away.

Deb stabilises herself into a crouch while Hannah's grip on her waist slips, water forcing her away from the rocky path we were picking. I lean down and seize Deb's arm, determined that nothing will take her away from me, when Hannah's arm drops away, but Deb snaps out her hand and grabs her. She doesn't let go, doesn't let the stream have Hannah, even though I know she'd love to. She shifts her footing and leans her weight in the opposite direction to drag Hannah back to the rock. I hold tightly to keep my sister anchored while she pulls. When she is close enough, I let go of Deb, reach out and I am able to wrap arms around Hannah and wrench her out of the water's jealous grip. Together we pull Hannah out. Deb scurries across the stream to the other side, and I follow, half-carrying a wet, shivery Hannah.

It was only a split-second scare, but the relief I feel is more than split-second relief.

"Y-You caught me," Hannah says to Deb through chattering teeth. I see her deep surprise in her face. "You saved me."

Jeans soaked, my shirt on her damp at the hem, Deb shrugs and starts up the incline. "Don't tell anyone. I'll deny it if you do." But she's stronger, clearer, more alert, and it's not just because of the energy drink or the cold water. She's a hero at heart and she draws strength from this – from saving rather than from ruining. In this forest where I once kept her, I recall how saving Lumen from her demons was salvation for me also in my dark times. This thought bolsters me. When I looked after Lumen I was just like Deb; my means of saving were different from hers but I helped someone else and felt better, _fuller_ , more whole because of it. I am not so different after all.

Tonight, despite our highly _ab_ normal circumstances, I do not find it so far-fetched that my sister believes I, too, am simply normal underneath my trauma and conditioning.

Deb and I get Hannah out of the crevice and almost out of sight of the broken bridge before Elway quietly pulls up behind my car with his lights off. He hopes to go unnoticed but we Morgans are listening and watching for his arrival. We continue through the forest at the same pace, and in case he can't see us, I fish out the flashlight, thankfully waterproof, from Hannah's bag and flash it about as though we are really stupid enough to use it to find our way.

We walk and walk. Every so often I hear the crunch of leaves or the snap of a twig far behind us, signalling that Deb's former employer is following. My sister and I keep Hannah between us so we can share her weight and keep our pace even. We don't have much to say but we speak occasionally to ensure Elway can hear us. The women are both shivering with cold as their damp clothes are further cooled by the forest night air.

"How much further?" Hannah asks exhaustedly. Deb looks across at me for the answer, interested as well.

"Not much, I expect," I say. "It's up to him."

It's another ten minutes before Elway unwittingly makes up our minds for us. He must stumble, because there's a loud rustling noise that we can't pretend not to have heard. We stop and I flash the light about before turning it off. Like I'm stupid and couldn't find the button. I drop the flashlight into Hannah's bag. In the immediate darkness, Deb and Hannah hold their breaths. We listen and it is apparent that Elway saw my 'accidental' signal, realises we must be aware of him and is heading this way with haste. Leaves crunch under his pounding feet and branches swish as he hits them. He is sick of sneaking and, now that his illusory cover is blown, he is ready to confront us. I dig in my pocket for the syringe. I lean across Hannah and press it into Deb's hand. She looks up at me and even in the dark I see uncertainty reflected in her eyes. Her fingers close over mine, worriedly.

"We're going to split up," I explain in a low voice. "I'm taking Hannah and you run in the opposite direction. You'll be quick, gone before he's got the chance to think too hard, and we'll be slower, easier targets. He's going to come after us, try to get Hannah from me. He wants his payout. Once he does, you double back. Come up from behind. Jab him with this. It's not a whole dose, less than half, but it'll put him out for a bit."

"Then what?" Deb whispers back in the same tone. We can hear Elway closing in.

"Not telling. Are you ready?"

"As ever."

I look at Hannah. "He's going to chase us. We have to stay ahead until Deb catches up." I know my sister is faster than Elway. She almost outran him last night and would have caught him given a bit more distance. Tonight she'll have that distance. All I'm worried about is Hannah keeping a decent pace until Deb is able to close the gap and take out Elway. "You can't stop until I say so, okay?"

Hannah nods uncertainly. Deb releases her and takes the syringe from me. Her fingers drop away from mine. We all tense and wait for Elway to come into sight.

"Hannah _fucking_ McKay!"

We can't see him yet but he we hear his shout through the trees. Thanks for the positioning signal, Elway. I now know exactly how far away you are and what direction you'll be coming from. I decide to extend him the same courtesy and exclaim, " _Shit_!" Within two seconds Elway bursts into sight through the trees up ahead. I tap Deb's arm and she takes off running, and I pause just a beat longer to let Elway get a look at who I am with. I grab the stolen fedora from her trademark light hair. Then I bolt in the opposite direction with Hannah in tow. In the dark I am sure our split and speed is disorientating to our stalker, and I listen as he crashes between a pair of young trees, breaking thin branches off.

"Go, go, go!" I yell to Hannah, ensuring we are the obvious target. We dash through the forest. She is quicker than I thought she would be, matching my pace, lifting her wrecked arm in its sling at the elbow as best she can manage to act as a buffer to the branches that whip back when I slam through them ahead of her. She holds my hand tightly. She keeps up. She is tired, hurting, but she is a survivalist at heart and she will do what it takes to stay out of Jacob Elway's hands.

Elway is noisy at first but then I don't hear anything. I assume he is running the same path as us and has no branches to break because I've already broken them. We run for about twenty seconds before I quickly look back to check how far back our pursuer is. I can't see him, so I glance back again. I slow when I don't see him at all.

I stop altogether. "What?" Hannah asks, panicky, crashing into me and looking all around in the darkness to find what's slowed me up. She follows my gaze tensely. "Where is he?"

I realise my mistake.

Shit.

"Deb." I grab Hannah's shoulder and shove the hat back into her hands. "Stay here. Use the flashlight to beat his brains out if he comes back this way."

But I know he won't. I race back the way I came, sick with myself. I was wrong. I thought I understood Elway. I thought he was all about money and the thrill of the chase. Clearly this is not the case, because offered the choice to chase down the money, he opted to follow Deb instead. I don't understand why – I know he saw me with Hannah, I know he knows which way she went – but I do understand that whatever his reasons, I won't like them.

Jacob Elway is chasing my sister through the dark. In no universe is there a Dexter who is okay with this. I wasn't worried about him before but that was when I 'knew' what he was after. Now I don't know how worried I should be. I clamp down on the concern before it can evolve into fear. I shouldn't fear. Fear, as Yoda tells us, is the path to the dark side, and in my case this has always been true. If I am afraid I will lose control to the darkness and I will become the monster I am trying not to be.

I decide to be annoyed. I'm annoyed, so annoyed with myself for taking this chance and splitting from my sister. Now there is as much as a minute of distance between us, and she's faster than I am. I'm never going to catch up with her. The trees and branches already parted, I am quicker going back than I was on my way through, and I am passing our start point within fifteen seconds, so hopefully I can still gain on Elway. I am totally unarmed – Deb has my syringe and the knife is in the car – but I will deal to him well enough when I catch up without either of those. I am angry with him for being so goddamn determined to interfere with our already complicated lives, and for outwitting me. Contrary to my plan, Deb is now the bait and I have become the surprise back-up. I am sorely tempted to shout out to Deb to let her know I am coming back for her, but if Elway doesn't know already, it'll give me away. I have to trust that she just knows.

The direction Debra picked is harsher going than mine and Hannah's path. The trees are, at first, more closely packed, and I am fortunate that she and Elway have already crashed through and cleared the way for me. I can't see or hear anyone but I press on, trying to be faster with each pounding step on the uneven, leaf-littered forest floor. The ground begins to decline and the trees grow more sparsely down its slope, and I fly down the hill. My keen eyesight identifies disturbed leaf matter on the ground and I know I am still going the right way.

I have picked up so much speed by the time I reach the bottom of the hill that I have no chance of stopping when I notice an obnoxious buttress root rising across my path. I have to leap to clear it. Where I land I see that the dirt and leaves on the ground are sprawled and scattered as though someone else was not as lucky as I in their landing. I hope it was Elway who fell; any fall or setback of his is a benefit to me.

I am in a sharp kind of dip and a muddy little stream runs aimlessly and lethargically along at the lowest point, more of a long puddle than a stream. My foot lands heavily in it as I evaluate the steeply rising slope before me. I quickly determine the path Deb and Elway took: leaves, stones and twigs knocked loose are still tumbling. I start up it and realise why. It's so steep in parts that running up it is almost climbing, with a need to grab onto brave young trees attempting to make this slope their home.

I hear distorted voices. I look up and my breath catches. I can see them near the top, both of them. It must have been Deb who tripped on the tree root because Elway has closed the gap and is gaining on her. I power up the hill, ignoring the scratches of broken green branches on my skin, the scrapings of gravel on my hands when I stumble and have to push myself up and onward. My eyes stay on the two people above me until Deb reaches the top and disappears over the crest of the hill. Elway is about seven seconds behind her; debris from his hurried climbing tumbles down into my face. Then he is gone, too. Neither has noticed me in the shadows behind them.

I use the trunks of young trees as handholds and throw myself up the incline, breathing steadily. I am far from the known trekking paths. It's half a minute of clambering as quickly and quietly as I can manage before I step over the peak of the hill and the rhythmic pace of my feet lengthens with the roll of another downhill. This slope goes deeper but its angle is much less sharp, and far away, towards the bottom of the hill, I see Deb flying between the trees, ponytail streaming out behind her. Elway's distance has increased – she's picked up her pace on the downhill. I feel confident that I can catch up with the investigator now, and, with the widely spaced vegetation of this hill, I will be easily seen if he bothers to glance back, so there is little use in me trying to remain quiet. I might as well leg it. I lengthen my stride as far as I dare. The beating I took yesterday from Saxon and the resultant complaints of my muscular system doesn't matter.

I start to gain on them as they reach a thicket of trees and must dodge through, like navigating an obstacle course. Deb is a practised runner and Elway has no chance of catching up with her until he pulls his gun. I feel my heart skip a beat. He's treading on thin ice to chase her; he's not allowed to _shoot_ her. She's _mine_ to protect. The darkness presses on me. I stoop down and grab a rock from beside my foot. I slow right down and fling it with all my strength. Not bothering to stop or take proper aim, Elway points the gun at Deb and it goes off. Chips of bark spray from the tree right beside Deb and she ducks behind it. Jacob is a better shot than I wanted to see. Still running, he may be about to shoot again, but the rock I threw smashes into his shoulder blade. He stumbles forward and I jump behind a tree as he shouts with anger and pain. I peek past the trunk in the moment of still silence that follows. Elway scrambles up and looks wildly about for the origin of the rock, realising for the first time that Debra is not helplessly alone after all.

"Who's fucking there?" he roars, one hand groping across his body to cover the point of pain. "Show your ugly face. McKay? Or Dexter?" I stay motionless. I mentally plead with Deb to do the same. Elway starts back in my direction. "Get out here, fucking cowards! Think you can take me on? Not so brave now, huh? Get out here and try me!"

"You _shot_ at me!" Deb shouts back at him from her hiding place. She sounds outraged. I wish she'd shut up and let him come back for me instead of trying to be brave and baiting him back. "What the fuck's your problem?"

Elway turns and stomps after her. The second his back is turned I slip through the shadows down towards them. Downhill, I see the wavering of shadows as Deb does the same.

" _You_ 're my fucking problem!" Elway spits venomously, breaking into a jog. Gun still raised. My sister shifts from the cover of one tree to another, trying to stay unseen. "You've been fucking with my life for months. I can fucking _see_ you," he adds angrily, launching forward and grabbing at her. Deb shoots out from between two trees into my view again, narrowly escaping his grasp, and he follows close behind. I hurry down after them, determined still not to be afraid, though the situation has by now surpassed the region of 'worrisome' and is definitely within the realm of 'frightening'. Another of my nightmare enemies confronting us, another person shooting at my sister, another person unreasonably angry and psychotic with us. This is quickly becoming the most eventful and horrible week of my life. Eight days ago I told Deb I was leaving for Argentina and I thought her reaction was the worst thing. Clearly I was both naive and wrong.

"Fuck off, Jake!" A branch too thick to break catches Deb across the middle and she is forcibly stopped until she can duck underneath it. "Leave me alone!"

"Get back here, you incestuous little whore," Elway snarls, whipping out his hand as he ducks to follow her. By a stroke of bad luck his fingers catch the ends of her ponytail and he yanks back. Deb cries out as the hairs are ripped from her scalp; she tries to keep going but her momentary pause gives him enough time to get a better grip higher up. "Come _back_." He pulls savagely on her hair and she's caught; she goes down, screaming at him. "You get around, fucking anything and anyone. Little slut. But I'm not good enough for you?" She punches him – he falls to his hands and knees – and she wrenches herself free, leaving him with a handful of long dark hair, and scrambles to her feet, but he snatches her ankle and rips it out from under her. She falls again. She kicks and he drags her back through the leaves. Predator and prey. It's terrifying to watch. I can't _not_ watch. I put my every fibre behind reaching them but I am still too many seconds away.

"Get away from me! Let go of me!" Deb screams furiously, beating at Elway with her open hands. The syringe is gone. She must have dropped it.

"You little fucking tease! I gave you a job when you were a fucking mess, I looked out for you, I was good to you." He hits her back, viciously, in the midsection. Her pained cry makes me see red and I throw her request for Elway to be left alive to the winds. "And in return you lead me on, quit your job, embarrass me, undermine my fucking reputation... And whatever the fuck else you're doing. Working with Hannah McKay? The killer you're supposed to be catching?" He drags her close and points the gun into the dirt beside her to fire it. His wrist rocks back with the kick of the discharge. Deb stops fighting long enough to shriek involuntarily and cover her ears. That second of inactivity is what he needs to pin her down, climb over her and shove the muzzle of the pistol into the middle of her chest. She tries to pull away, no doubt it burns, but this is not why I miss a step and almost fall. It's my nightmare, brought sickeningly to life. Elway, kneeling over her, whispering jealous, twisted things, gun to her heart. I am close enough now for my pounding footsteps to be audible but Elway is still talking. "Now I know why. You dirty, filthy little bitch – fucking your own brother. I knew, I _knew_ there was something _off_ about you two but I _never_ imagined _this_. What would your daddy have to say?" He laughs bitterly. "Or did he know? Did he have you first?"

Deb is crying by now, hurt and scared. "You're hurting me! Just leave me the fuck alone!"

Jacob Elway furiously grabs Deb's throat. "I'm hurting you? You've ruined my fucking life, you and the idiot brother you're screwing. How fucking dare you? Angel Batista is threatening me with legal action and no one at Miami Metro wants to deal with me." He presses the gun harder into her breastbone. "You're a liar and a fucking pretender. Meant to be a cop; you and your brother have been twisting homicide cases to suit yourselves for how fucking long? How many people have you two killed? Morgans: siblings who fuck and kill together. You're _a freak_. To think I wanted to-"

I slam my shoulder into Elway's back and tackle him to the ground. The gun skitters away. We land awkwardly but I expected it and he didn't so I recover quickest. Deb sits up and slides her legs out from under Elway's. I kneel over him like he did to her, digging my knee into the small of his back, and scrunch my hand through his stupid shiny hair. I smash his face downwards into the dirt. He makes an incoherent moaning scream and I think I hear his nose break. It isn't enough. I do it a second time, a third, a fourth, much harder. He continues to verbalise pained sounds and to struggle beneath me. Deb crawls a few feet away. I swing my leg off of Elway so he can roll over and look up at me. Face bloodied most satisfactorily, his eyes glint with fear in the darkness. It's appropriate: he _should_ be afraid. Like he made my sister afraid.

"Dexter...?" he groans. I don't want to hear his voice. I don't want him to be allowed to say anything, ever again, after the awful things he's said to Debra.

"What did I tell you?" I seize his throat and squeeze. His hands pull at mine but they lose their power when I punch him in the stomach, winding him. That should silence him. Blood drips from his busted nose onto his shirt as he curls over himself. I tighten my grip on his neck and knock his head again into the ground. "What did I _tell_ you? I _told_ you to _stay the hell away_ from my sister! I _told_ you I'd fuck you up. It was a fucking mistake to test me."

In my peripheral vision I note Deb running her hands through the leaf litter, searching for something. I ignore her; she's safe. Beneath me, Elway splutters through his mouthful of blood and struggles to breathe.

"Fucking... Morgans," he manages, voice muffled and nasally. Ugh, I want to kill him _so bad_. But the Code says no, he isn't a killer. And right now he's not a threat to my freedom. The darkness inside me says it doesn't matter.

"You told her you wouldn't kill him," Harry reminds me in his usual worried tone. I don't have time to reflect on how long it's been since I last heard from him. "Let go of the anger. You can't control it. Go back to the Code."

"There's always a loophole," Brian whispers excitedly in my ear. "There's always a way. Let him talk himself into trouble."

"I saw you... together," Elway taunts. "All over... each other. Crying, kissing, knives... Bigger fucking freak show... than I ever imagined. And I know you... killed Oliver Saxon at Dr Vogel's... together. Saw you leaving. Silver-tipped tongues, both of you... to talk your way out of that one. How many others?" He chokes briefly, then says, "You're as... fucking crazy... as each other. Maria La Guerta – she was fucking onto you two... wasn't she? She... arrested you. Then she died." He laughs humourlessly. "Convenient."

"Very," Brian agrees, and he and Harry disappear.

I smile, a genuinely pleased expression. "I was hoping you'd give me an excuse. And you have. Thanks." I reach my fingers through the leaves and the close on another rough rock. I raise it above his head and inhale deeply, breathing in the darkness that surrounds me, powers me, guides me to bring it down.

Just as with Vogel last week I am already driving downwards when I am interrupted, and again it's by Deb. Like a lamp suddenly switched on in a dark room, she appears unexpectedly beside Elway to jab him in the neck with the syringe and I wrench my arm back so that I throw the rock behind me. Elway goes immediately still and limp underneath me. I freeze, one hand still closed on his throat, and take stock of where I am and what I am doing. I am killing someone. Viciously. In the middle of a forest. With my younger sister watching. Traumatising her. Upsetting her. Scaring her. Like a monster. In this moment I am the creature Vogel believes me to be, channelling my brother, and _not_ the controlled being my father taught me to be, and I am even further from the good brother Debra thinks I am. The darkness that I was feeding from falls away when I choose to look at her and remember what I _really_ want. Yes, I want to strangle and bludgeon Jacob Elway, but more than that, I want to be Debra Morgan, hero. The hero does what's best for others. And it would be best for Deb _not_ to see me kill him like this.

I hurriedly release Elway and stand. Deb glances up at me but her shaky hands dig through Elway's pockets for his phone and his wallet. She hands them up to me, along with the syringe, without word. I am upset by her mechanical, detached motions. Going through the motions I would perform, motions I have accidentally taught her. I don't like it.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, "for scaring you." But I'm sorry for a lot more than just that. I turn away and stride through the trees. I can't bear to see her transforming into _me_. She's meant to be the hero. She does the saving, I do the dirty work. More and more I feel that I have been doing all the saving – mostly of her, because who else is there in need of it and worthy of saving? – and I have been leaving the dirty work for her. Tarnishing her. I am still ruining her. It hurts.

I am just like everyone else, she says. I can choose to _feel_ and be normal. I chose that already, didn't I? Didn't I choose _her_? I slow down. If I stop all this death, destruction and damage, and go back to being the big brother she used to think I was, before she knew better, will she go back to being the little sister she was, too? I pull the phone to pieces and break its parts before throwing them in different directions. Anything can be pulled apart; not everything can be put back together. But if you devote yourself to such a task, and want nothing but to fix a mess you've made, and make a choice that is right, can something be unbroken?

What choice can I possibly make next to fix my Deb?

She chooses it for me. I hear a stick break underfoot and I turn. I see Deb stalking down the path behind me. Before I can do anything she throws herself at me and I have to catch her. I pull my sister close against me as she wraps her arms tightly around me and buries her face into the crook of my neck. I feel her tears fall onto my skin and run down my back.

"You came and found me," I whisper, stroking her hair and her back rhythmically. Her light warms me, soothes me. She's safe. She feels safe with me. That brings me more satisfaction than anything I could have done to Elway. She adjusts and tightens her grip on me.

"You don't have to hide from me," she whispers back. "I've never been scared of you."

"You're crying."

"Am fucking not." The sniffle that follows does nothing to back this claim up. "I'm a bit sore, that's all. That fucking dickbag. I hope he chokes on his blood in his sleep. I hope he dies, painfully, like Clayton."

I'm disturbed by this. "You don't."

"Fine," she relents, relaxing me, "I probably don't really. But I hope it never heals properly, what you did to his nose."

" _You_ scared _me_ ," I admit, but I don't elaborate on that. I don't want to share that fear with her. "I'm sorry, I was wrong. I thought for sure he'd come for Hannah. I really didn't think he'd go after you. I shouldn't have left you. But you scared me when you blew your own cover! You should have stayed hidden, let him come back for me. Don't do that again. You don't need to protect me. For a second I was afraid I-"

"Dexter," Deb interrupts, grasping the neckline of my shirt in her fisted hand in an effort to hold me tighter. "For the last time – and you shouldn't need to be told this, you should just _know_ – I am _always_ going to be your pain-in-the-ass sister. I can't _not_ try to protect you."

"I can't stand you trying if it means risking yourself. I can't lose you."

"You're never going to lose me. I love you. I'm not going anywhere."

"Good." I close my eyes and breathe her in instead. She's so much better than the darkness. "You know I'm going to hold you to that." I keep her close for a long time, then release her. My hand, from resting on her back, is wet but not cold. Not water from her fall. Not mud. Blood. "Where are you hurt?"

"I'm _fine_ ," she claims, self-consciously tugging the opening of my button-up shirt closed around her neck. I shove her hands away and pull the fabric away to see where Elway had the gun. Between her breasts is an angry red burn. I turn her around and find my shirt stained at the shoulder from her blood.

I sigh exasperatedly. "This is _never_ going to heal at this rate. You're going to have an awful scar here, you know that?"

"Exactly what I wanted to hear." Deb pulls away from me and turns back with challenge bright in her eyes. "So I can remember this sinkhole in our lives forever. I'll just collect injuries from all of your enemies like vacationers collect spoons from different places. 'You want to know how I got these scars?'" She smirks, that lop-sided smile I love. "I can be a walking testament to your life and exploits."

My improved mood at having her come after me falls to pieces. "Deb, that's not funny." The notion of my sister's body as a record of my mistakes is too awful, too true to think on. "You know I hate seeing you hurt. How do you think it feels to be reminded that it's my fault?" My expression must relay my sadness because she drops the playful act and steps back to me. She takes my face in her hands and looks me in the eyes. I clamp my hands over hers.

"I'm sorry," she murmurs, and means it. "But I'm not sorry, too. I'm not sorry I called Elway away from you and that he caught me. I'm not sorry I shielded you from the glass. I'm not sorry I walked into Saxon's trap to save your butt. I'm not sorry I followed you to the docks and shot an innocent woman to protect you. I'm never going to be sorry for my choices – you can be sorry for yours, yours have been crap, but I'm happy with mine. None of this," she looks down at her burnt chest, looks over her shoulder at the bleeding cut, "is your fault. It's mine, from my choices."

"It's my-" I start; she cuts me off.

"Shut up and let me finish. You keep telling me not to change," she reminds me, straying into the topic of my fears I was trying to avoid, "and then asking me to in the same breath. I know you're afraid. I know I've been walking a blurred line and it scares you. But I'm _me_ , and you can't control me. I am going to keep scaring you, keep trying to take bullets for you, because _I love you_. Never _ever_ think I don't love you enough to try. If I didn't try, I wouldn't be me. The day I stop trying is the day I change and you lose me. So..." She tilts my face down so she can tenderly kiss my forehead. It's as intimate as a blessing or a promise. I close my eyes and wish this instant could last for always. She leaves her lips against my skin for a long moment of precious silence, then finishes, "So chill the fuck out."

I laugh and we release each other. She smiles at me. It doesn't matter it's night-time. She's the sun.

"Let's go and get him," I suggest, and we head back. Deb has Elway's gun in her back pocket, a clever thought she had before she came after me. She admits that her left ear is ringing from the gunshot Elway fired into the ground beside her and that before she ran after me she was pretty tempted to do the same thing to him in his unconscious state so he'd wake to the same discomfort, but knew the crack of gunfire would freak me out. So she chased me down instead to check I was alright. I take this as a reminder that my Deb, though dynamic and ever-shifting, is the same Debra Morgan as ever: the Deb who will choose compassion over the chance to be vindictive. That's the Deb I want to be.

We wander back and when we don't stumble across Elway's bloodied, unconscious body I start to think we've taken the wrong path, but I see the low-slung branch that caught Deb across the waist, the rock I almost smashed into Elway's face, the muddled leaves where the altercation took place. Everything is as we left it... except Jacob Elway. He's nowhere to be seen.

"Fuck," Deb murmurs, drawing the gun. "You did say it was only a tiny dose."

I look around, alert and worried. Is he hiding in the shadows? Waiting to burst out and attack us? Doubtful – he's got to be drowsy and disorientated, not to mention in a great deal of pain. I listen, but hear nothing. The damage to his nose will make his breathing noisy, and if I can't hear him, he's not too near. Deb and I scour the proximity for several minutes, not moving out of the other's field of vision, but we find nothing much. A few patches of disturbed leaf litter that _could_ be indicative of footprints, but Elway isn't running, so it's not as churned as when I tracked them before. I give up and go back to Deb.

"Well, this isn't ideal," I say.


	27. 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. Despite mentioning both, I have zero rights to Red Bull or Yoda, but if I could pick one, it'd be Yoda. Obviously.

" _Not ideal_?" Deb huffs as we slide cautiously down the steep incline on our way back to Hannah. It's probably the third time she's said this, and as with the other two times, I say nothing in response. We've looked for Elway, circled around and around the area in which we last saw him, and he's absolutely nowhere to be found. Knowing what he knows, what physical harm I've done to him and how many charges he can have thrown against me the second he speaks with anyone remotely connected with the law – no, it's fucking _not ideal_ that he's gone missing. I'd prefer he was dead, or otherwise restrained. I am most unhappy with his disappearance. Deb continues, "When is anything about our lives _ideal_? Think back and tell me when you last remember our lives resembling anything that you could call _ideal_? I would label our normal day-to-day existence as _not ideal_. This is fucking problematic, that's what it is."

"I don't care what you want to call it," I answer irritably. I hold onto one of the young trees I held onto when I climbed up the first time as I pick my way down the hill in the dark. My sister leads. "Be quiet so I can think of what to do about it."

"There's nothing you _can_ do about it," Deb responds. "He's fucking _gone_. That's why it's problematic."

My phone vibrates in my pocket. I slip and almost lose my footing until I grab onto the next tree branch to steady myself. Deb stops and reaches back for me, concerned, but continues down when I right myself and carry on. I check my phone. I have a bunch of missed calls from Hannah. I didn't notice them at first because I was fixated on beating the life out of Jacob Elway, and then on berating myself for the effect I continue to have on my sister's soul, and then on my sister herself. I don't even recall the sensation of the device shivering against my leg. There is also a text – _What's going on? Where are you? I heard gunshots! I love you, please call back and say you're alright_ – and I call back. Hannah is freaking out but incredibly relieved to hear from me. I tell her I am heading back with Deb and she can start in our direction if she wants. I don't mention Elway; I hang up when she asks.

"That's a very bad habit," Deb scolds me. "You're a fucking hoarder of information. Live a little. Spare a few details from time to time."

"She'll just get all worried and upset if I tell her I lost Elway," I lament, but Deb isn't sold.

"So instead you're going to wait two minutes until you see her and have to tell her the same thing face-to-face, where she'll get just as worried and upset. And why? Actually," she notes, swinging to the next tree trunk, "I have no fucking idea why, but you do it all the goddamn time. You know, I think it's your fault I was poisoned tonight."

I am outraged. "I had nothing to do with that!" Not to mention I would _never_ hurt her like that. "And you said before that all your injuries lately have been _your_ fault."

"All but that one," she decides, waiting for me to catch up. "Hannah spiked the booze but she wouldn't have been there if you'd just told her what the hell you were doing. You hung up on her this afternoon when Elway and Clayton were outside my place, too. Honestly, you're a shitty boyfriend."

I can't argue with her logic. I do blame myself for her poisoning. She's right, I kept Hannah in the dark and drove her to the lengths she took today to preserve her own life. I take small, measured steps on my careful way over to my sister. I grab onto the tree she's holding.

"I don't intend to be for much longer," I remind her. She crouches down and clambers awkwardly down a gravelly section of the steep hill. "Not all of us can be good at everything, _Miss Perfect_ Debra Morgan. I put too much effort into being a dad and a brother. Do you have any idea how hard it is being _your_ brother?" I ask, following her.

"Oh?" She laughs at me. "Do you want to play that game with me? I'll take that bet, and I raise you one lifetime of being _your_ sister."

"Fair call," I admit. "I fold."

We slip, slide and trot down the hill, much slower than either of us climbed it a few minutes ago. We trudge through the muddy puddle of a stream at the bottom, step carefully over the buttress root that tripped Deb on her first race along here – "I can't believe I didn't see that!" – and start up the next incline. Way up ahead, I see the dim flicker of a flashlight's beam bouncing between trees, and know Hannah is heading for us. Deb sighs.

"Dex, she is _so_ annoying," she complains. "Can't we just shoot her with Elway's gun and leave her here to be eaten by whatever the fuck lives in this forest?"

"No," I say pointedly, keeping pace with her. "That would make us bad people."

"You're already a _bad people_ , and I cover for you, so I'm no angel either. Come on, it'd be great." Deb clutches my arm and leans playfully into me. She's smirking, so I know she's playing, not seriously suggesting this, and I relax and play along. "I promise I wouldn't tell anyone."

"You should be careful, throwing the 'p' word around," I comment. "I happen to take it very seriously."

"When have I ever broken a promise?" Deb demands. I shrug.

"Didn't you promise to never leave me and then ask me to kill you?"

"Doesn't count. You didn't do it and I'm still here. Next."

"Didn't you agree to stick things out with Hannah and watch her back? Now you're suggesting we murder her in a forest and leave her body to be eaten by scavengers?"

"Oh, no," Deb disagrees, letting me go and continuing ahead. "I didn't promise her shit. I didn't even _use_ the 'p' word. I shook hands with the witch and said I'd stop trying to 'get between you', or whatever, provided she stopped trying to poison me... and fifteen fucking minutes later I'm spitting blood because she's fed me _acid_."

"Clayton fed you acid," I correct. "And Hannah did try to save you."

"Don't split hairs. She's a fucking psycho and whatever tentative deal I had with her is fucking _off_ from my end. I'd happily see her die and not feel the least bit bad about it." Which I know is a falsehood, considering she had her chance to let Hannah drown earlier and she opted against it. Deb gets ahead of me as we continue hiking up the steady incline. "It'd be a simple exercise in self-preservation."

"Simple, hey?" I ask, unable to totally eliminate the hint of mockery that sneaks into my tone. Deb pulls a branch right back and lets go so that it snaps back at me. I block it with my hands and push through to catch up to her. "If it's so simple then you go right ahead. Save me the trouble of getting her out of the country."

"Don't tempt me, brother," she answers, pulling the gun and loading it. "I'm a good fucking shot."

"Aww," I tease, looping an arm over her and pulling her against me as we walk. It sets her off-balance and she pushes half-heartedly away, mumbling about what a jerk I am. "You're cute sometimes."

"Get off," Deb orders, pulling her head out of my grip with awkward difficulty, but when she escapes and her hair is a scruffy mess she's smiling in spite of herself. She stands opposite me and I stop walking. "Fine, I'm all talk. We both know I'm not going to shoot her in the middle of the fucking forest. But I'd let _you_ do it."

"You're not going to shoot her at all," I correct with a smile, taking the gun. I unload it and give it back. "You had your fun blowing a hole in her arm."

"You've got some stupid idea in your head that Hannah is so sweet and undeserving and all that shit." Deb shakes her head. "Like she _deserves_ to escape justice and go live happily fucking ever after in the South American sunset. She's dangerous, Dexter. She's manipulative, she's psychotic, she's cold and heartless..."

"I know all that."

"Yet you still fucked her. If she gets the smallest inkling that you're going to dump her poisoning ass, we're fucking goners." She holds up three fingers. "She's poisoned me _three fucking times_. Feels bad about a grand total of _fuck all_ of them. She's _worse_ than you have ever been. The first time she tried to kill me, she _knew_ it would hurt you and did it anyway."

"You're going to be in Orlando," I remind my sister, unsure of what point she's trying to make. "By the time you come back to Miami she'll be out of the States and you won't need to worry anymore about whether or not to eat something."

"She's a Black Widow, Dex," Deb says. "She kills her lovers. She hurts the people she cares about. She's going to hurt _you_."

"I can take care of myself. Don't stress about me."

"I _am_ stressing! She's a jealous bitch. And now we're right in her sights. You just ran off on her to save _my_ life instead of looking after hers. Sends a strong message, you know?"

"Only as strong as you, kissing me right in front of her, like a crazy person," I shoot back. She cringes and covers her face with her hand, remembering her ill-considered provocation. "Listen, you leave Hannah to me. I can salvage this. Make her believe. You just... be less crazy." Deb laughs, just once, exasperated, like I'm being unreasonably thick. I fold my arms. "Where's this coming from? You aren't honestly suggesting we kill her, so what are you saying?"

"I don't want any more blood on my hands," Deb agrees reluctantly. " _You_ don't want any more blood on my hands. But I'm letting you know right now," she says, tone dropping into seriousness, finger pointed at me, "if you can't control her, and I come back to town and find she's hurt you, I will track that bitch down across state and federal boundaries, I will cut her throat open and watch her bleed the fuck out, and I will not waste a heartbeat feeling bad for it."

I believe her. I raise my eyebrows in the stretch of silence that follows this unexpectedly graphic threat.

"Uh, alright," I say eventually. "Consider me warned." I start past her towards the increasingly bright flashes of Hannah's flashlight, keeping wide of my sister. She isn't amused by my faux-fear and punches my arm as she turns to follow me. "Since my moral goddess of a sister isn't around to hear us conspiring, what do you think we should do about Elway?"

Deb exhales heavily through her nose, thoughtful. "I think we should leave."

"Leave, and?"

"Just leave. Jake's got no phone, no food, no water, no fucking idea where he is or which way's which. With that bridge out of action there's hardly anyone out here, certainly no campers. The footprints we found were heading away from the track. He's woken up alone and scared of us coming back and just bailed into the wilderness. It could be days before he finds his way out of this shithole; if he ever does. Even if he turns around right now, walks quickly and is lucky enough to pick the right direction, he's over an hour by foot from the road. If _we're_ lucky he could die out here. But we're never lucky," Deb laments.

In the distance, halfway up the hill, I see Hannah with her flashlight between some trees. I use the torch function on my phone to signal to her.

"We're still alive," I argue lightly. "In light of what's happened in the past few days, I'd say we're doing alright for luck."

We agree on a course of action while Hannah rushes down to us, fear, relief and uncertainty crossing her face in equal fractions. I stop when I see her, because I don't see her at all. I see Dr Vogel, crushing heart medication into my father's whiskey. I see a water bottle on the floor of Debra's car after she crashed last Christmas; the porcelain edges of a toilet bowl as my sister vomits water, blood and acid. I see a jealous spider hiding in the petals of a delicate pink flower, spying on the world and waiting for something silly to land in her web of lies, a chance to lash out and capture another victim. She runs straight into my arms, hugging me tightly with her one good arm – momentarily I consider snapping her neck. I don't do it. Where has the love gone? She stands back to look over me worriedly.

"What happened?" I don't know, it just went away. But I still have to make her believe it's still there. "I heard two gunshots. Did you catch him?" she asks breathlessly. "Your phone cut out."

"Is that what happened?" Deb asks innocently, continuing up past us. Hannah spares her a questioning glance; I force a smile, wrap an arm around my girlfriend's shoulders in an affectionate gesture and steer her after my sister.

"Bad reception out here," I lie. Hannah leans into me, appeased. "Elway got away. Lost in the forest somewhere. Unarmed," I add, when Hannah looks around nervously. I point ahead to my sister, in whose hand swings Elway's pistol. "Harmless, essentially."

"How did he get away?"

"Bad luck," Deb reports over her shoulder, "and not enough tranquiliser."

"Why didn't you have enough tranquiliser?" Hannah presses, frowning. "I thought that animal stuff was strong."

"It is," I answer, "but I only gave her a tiny dose, what I had left in one needle."

"I heard the shots," Hannah says again, eyes lingering on Debra's blood-stained back. She must recall dressing that wound this morning because she loses interest in Deb and looks up at me instead. "Did he shoot at you?"

"We're fine," I assure her. "Let's just get out of here."

"I don't understand," Hannah argues, stopping and pulling away from me. We Morgans have to stop, also. Hannah points at Deb. "She's bleeding and covered in leaves. He shot at you two twice, yet she's got his gun. Clearly something went down. She got close enough to tranquilise him. He should have been _out_ , right? You weren't that far behind. How did you manage to lose an unconscious person in such a small space of time? Why aren't you telling me what happened? Why don't you ever tell me anything?"

I glance back at Deb, who shrugs uselessly. I don't know what I'm meant to say. The facts are clear enough to me: there wasn't enough M99 in the syringe, just enough to put Elway down but not to keep him unconscious. The pain I put him in before Deb jabbed him must have brought him around quicker than I anticipated. He was only out for a few minutes, then. I was stupid enough to walk away. Deb was stupid enough to follow me and leave him unattended, but in fairness, she can't be blamed for not guessing how long the tranquiliser's effectiveness would take to wear off. _I_ should have known. But my stupid human emotions, growing more intense by the hour it seems, overpowered the kingdom of logic and drove me from Deb and Elway with unreasonable fears of change, and Deb, red queen of human emotions, naturally had to come after me. To tell me she loves me too much to listen to me. To tell me she'd do anything for me and isn't about to apologise for that. To tell me to chill the fuck out and trust her to be herself. All things I _know_. Things I shouldn't need to be told.

But some of these things seem wrong to tell Hannah, even if they are plain, cold facts. I told Deb I would salvage my relationship with Hannah and persuade her that my intentions for us are still pure and strong. Sharing these details brings me, in my mind anyway, uncomfortably close to admitting that I am in fact in love with Debra and caring for Hannah decidedly less from one day to the next.

"Dexter can't tell you shit because he didn't _see_ shit," Deb says for me finally. Pulling me out of trouble. As always. "He was ages behind."

"So he might not have seen you talking your way out of strife with Elway and making a deal?" Hannah quips. "Is that what happened, Debra?"

"Elway shot at me," Deb reminds the other. "You don't shoot people you're negotiating with, and he didn't even know Dex was following. He shot, I hid, Elway came after me, there was an _altercation_." She points helpfully at her messy hair. "I stuck that motherfucker in the neck, heard my brother calling out to me, went back to him to prove I wasn't shot... When we went back, he'd up and walked away. There was hardly any shit left in the syringe so we're guessing it wore off."

"It didn't occur to me that it'd be so short-lived," I apologise to my sister. I lift my foot and tap my ankle. Inside my boot, under my sock, is a second syringe. "I should have given you a full dose but there wasn't time." I hesitate, then tell her the truth. "Actually... I forgot I had it."

"Somehow, not surprised."

Hannah looks between us suspiciously but I can see she's buying the story. It's not that far from the truth. It just leaves out the details she won't like or understand. Like me beating the life out of a man to defend my sister's honour rather than for the difficulty he's caused Hannah. Like me walking off because the fear of being responsible for changing my sister for the worse is greater than the fear of Elway himself. Like standing in the forest holding onto Deb, sharing openly how deep our depraved love for each other runs, while our opponent awoke unattended and crept away into the night.

Hannah looks at Deb. "Did he say why he followed us, before you knocked him out? _If_ that's what you did?"

"I'll ignore the blatant attempts to redirect suspicion onto me, shall I?" Deb offers sarcastically. "He said he was pissed with me for lying and hiding your worthless ass and he expected me to come quietly and confess to everything. Like that was going to happen. He said if I didn't play along there'd be more fake fucking photos and if I did, there'd be a deal in it for me. I told him to fuck off." She folds her arms. "Looking out for your better interests has brought me so much goddamn happiness and good fortune that I saw no reason to stop now."

I go through my pocket for Elway's wallet and show it to Hannah. "Deb got this and his phone. I took the phone apart. He's not reporting us, and he's not calling for help anytime soon."

"He's pretty fucked," Deb concurs, "especially once Dex and I get to his house."

"What about keys?" Hannah asks, surprising me with her clipped and businesslike tone. I look at Deb again.

"He didn't have any on him," she says. "I checked all his pockets."

"He must have left them in his car. Works for us." Hannah heads on up the hill without waiting for us. Deb and I share a glance as we fall into step with each other and follow. Apparently we're forgiven and Hannah has accepted us back onside.

Hannah is correct, and we find Elway's keys still hanging in the ignition of his dark-coloured car. Chugging a second can of Red Bull, Deb agrees to follow me to the shelter in Elway's car. I give her another pair of gloves and we quickly discuss our plan for the vehicle. It suits us even better to use his car than to use his house. We drive back down the track onto the entry road and then back out onto the main road to continue on to the next turnoff. Hannah sits in the passenger seat beside me, silent at first, watching me.

"I shouldn't worry about her handing me in, should I?" she asks finally. I pull my gaze from the mirror, where I'm keeping my attention on my exhausted sister's driving, to glance at Hannah.

"Deb? She's not going to do anything that puts me on the line. It's like you said to her; if you go down, or if she goes down, we all do. She's smart, you know," I add with a quick smile before going back to watching the road. "She knows what's good for her." She just doesn't go for that usually.

"She loves you," Hannah notes. I frown, unsure how far to let this conversation go before I rein it in.

"She's my sister. I love her, too."

"I know you do." Hannah turns to look out the window pensively. I wait for her to continue. She takes a while. "When I'm in Cuba and everything here calms down and you're ready to come join me... Will you really be able to do it? Leave her?"

No. "Slowly, like we said," I say. "A few weeks, then a few months, then, one day, always. It's going to take time, to learn to be dependent on someone else after a lifetime depending on my dad and then on my sister, but... it's what we talked about." I flash Hannah a tentative smile. "It's what I want."

I must sound convincing, because she finally smiles back, a pretty smile on a tear-stained face.

"It's what I want, too," she murmurs, reaching over with her left hand to touch my wrist lovingly. "For you to rely on me, lean on me, trust me, learn to need me... For us to be two halves of the same thing. Us. For always."

I imagine, vividly, Deb rolling her eyes as I quietly agree, "For always."

Hannah gives the would-be sweet moment its appropriate time before asking, "Do you think she'll let you come?"

I laugh before I can stop myself. "No. I think when I want to visit you, I'll have to just disappear and call her from the airport so she can't stop me. It'll be fun," I assure Hannah, who looks doubtful about my description of our imaginary future. "She'll be pissed but she can't stay mad with me forever. And it's not like she can do much more than hit me, scream at me and slam doors in my face when I get home – nothing new for us, as you pointed out this morning."

"I guess. How will you get away?"

"I'm not above tranquilising her when it suits me."

Hannah sighs and removes her hand from mine to adjust her damp sling. "God, I must really love you, Dexter, to still want you despite knowing that you are one of a two-piece set of extremely complicated Morgans. Your sister is a massive pain in the ass."

"She is," I agree whole-heartedly. "But..." I reach over and squeeze Hannah's knee. "Tonight's the last time you'll be seeing her in a _really_ long while."

"How long is really long?" Hannah asks, not daring to be too hopeful. I shrug.

"However long it takes her to want to visit you in Cuba," I say. "Maybe ever. You can stay at this traveller's centre until I get back from Orlando, which means Batista and the new marshal they send out to replace Clayton can check mine and Deb's places and find nothing. You did wipe the place down?" Hannah nods. "When we've made arrangements to get you onto a plane, I'll come get you. Debra and Harrison will still be away. From there... as per the original plan. You're MIA and eventually assumed dead. After a while, I come see you. Perfect."

Perfect. Both Hannah and I smile, looking out the front windscreen, envisioning our own perfect futures, one of us unaware that the other this thinking of a totally different scene. Hannah's face falls suddenly.

"Oh," she says sadly, "I just realised, when I said goodbye to Harrison this morning, it was goodbye for a really long time. I'm see him before I leave. I'm going to miss him so much."

"He's going to miss you," I lie. My four-year-old can't wait to be rid of Hannah, even though he likes her as a person. He thinks, more accurately than he can ever know, that she represents a danger to his family. He is excited by the prospect of her leaving.

"But it won't be for long," Hannah goes on, bolstering herself. "You two will visit soon enough, and we can be a family. Like we talked about." She smiles brightly at me. "Harrison is so wonderful, Dexter. He's going to be a great big brother to our kids one day. I can hardly wait to be his mom."

Like Rita is replaceable. Like Astor and Cody are replaceable. Like any of my people are replaceable. In my perfect future, Hannah never sees Harrison again. But in hers she does, so I stay quiet.

I drive as close to the traveller's centre as I can get by car, and Deb follows. My sister parks and gets out of Elway's car without even turning off the engine, runs about four paces and kneels to throw up again. Concerned by this sudden regression, I disembark from my own car to go to her, but she recovers before I get there and dismisses me.

"I'm fine," she says while I fuss over her, pushing my hands away and striding back to Elway's vehicle to turn it off. "I was just feeling queasy, that's all."

"You were fine on the drive out from Clayton's," I note in a low voice, leaning against the car while she turns the key. "You were fine firing the gun at Hannah; you were fine running away from Elway. Now-"

"I'm still fine," she insists, closing the car door. She takes the gloves off and pushes them into my hands when I reach for her again. "I think that's it. It's all out now. Elway hit me," she reminds me, resting a hand across her midsection. "Probably just from that."

But I don't think so. That was a while ago, and though brutal and probably painful, it doesn't seem related. I leave it.

Hannah climbs awkwardly out of my car, looking worried. For what Deb's health means for herself, no doubt, not for what it means for Deb. For me. "Is she alright?" she calls, and I don't like her very much right now so I don't answer. Does she look alright? Is spontaneous vomiting ever synonymous with 'alright'? I thought Hannah's violent flushing of Deb's digestive system was a cure, a salvation, but logically I know that hydrochloric acid poisoning can take days. I am quite sure that whatever dregs of the poison are left in her are not enough to kill her, but she could be unwell and delicate for the rest of the week.

I unload Hannah's suitcase and the three of us trek up the mountain to the shelter where I once kept Lumen against her will while I tried to decide what to do with her. She feared me here, saw me for the monster I was and rejected my attempts to help her, but it was the start of my recovery following Rita's death. While Deb handled my life for me on the outside, kept me afloat, Lumen fixed me on the inside. And I helped fix her. Proving I can fix broken things. I look back at Deb as we walk in silence. My sister has suffered differently from how Lumen suffered, but both have been torn by monsters. Lumen recovered. Debra can, too. From Hannah's poison _and_ from me.

When we reach the shelter I check for signs of occupancy. It seems to have been hardly used since Lumen was here. That brings me a tiny sense of sadness. I missed Lumen a lot when she left but never went looking for her; unlike Deb, who I love too much, I was able to let Lumen go free when she asked it of me. I did love her. In ways I still do. Being back here after so long reminds me of a love that saved instead of ruined. I encourage Hannah inside, noting her unimpressed expression with her living quarters for the next week. Hers is not one of those loves.

There is running water, a stovetop and a kettle, the bare basics for cooking, in a kitchenette. Deb throws open cupboards and finds cans of preserved food, ensuring Hannah's survival for at least a few days.

"I'll come back with more," I guarantee. I redress Hannah's wound, more tightly and efficiently now that we are unmoving, and clean her up. I fashion a new, better sling and arrange her arm in that. I upend the handbag and walk Hannah through the medications I bought for my sister, all of which are equally useful to Hannah's recovery. She is still in pain but relatively less since taking the drugs in the car.

Deb sits outside with her back against the wall, silent, looking like she is struggling to stay awake. She entertains herself by lighting a fire and burning Elway's wallet and its contents. I negotiate with Hannah, who decides to chance cooking baked beans with only one useful hand, for a pair of shorts from her suitcase and encourage Deb to change into it so we can burn her clothes, so soaked are they in Hannah's blood that there is no chance of ever completely washing it out. The likelihood of Deb's clothes being lab-tested for DNA, or of her garbage being scavenged for evidence now that the slimeball Elway is lost in the woods, is so miniscule that the most tired and bored part of my mind tells me it's a waste of time. But more far-fetched, unlikely things have happened lately, so I decide not to risk it. Safe, not sorry. I throw her bundled-up, unrecognisable shirt onto the fire and stoke it with sticks to help the flames engulf the stiffening fabric. Deb stands and peels her jeans down; her thighs and shins are rust-brown from the blood that soaked through and has dried on her skin. She digs through her pockets for the things she wants to save from the fire – her phone, and the photo I wrote my promise on. She hands them to me while she arranges the denim around the fire, then sits down in only her underwear and my shirt, pulling me down to sit beside her. She leans her head on my shoulder and seems lethargic. By the flickering light of the campfire, we look at the picture in my hands.

The photograph was wrecked when I found Deb with it last night, cutting the face out, and we made it worse by fighting over it, scrunching it and tearing the edge. Now it's stained with Hannah's blood, too. But it's still recognisable as a photograph of Debra Morgan, and on the back, the handwritten text is still recognisable as a promise from Dexter Morgan. That brings me immeasurable contentment. No matter what harm I do to us, no matter what damage _we_ do to us, no matter what danger Hannah's influence represents to us, what we are stays the same. We don't change. She's still her and I'm still me. She still loves me and deserves better and I still need her too much to let her go out and get it.

I slide the photo into my pocket when Hannah comes out and offers us baked beans for dinner. I am starving and happily chow it down, but Deb claims to not be hungry. I try to argue that she must be, it's been hours since she ate, but she insists she still feels awful and can't stomach food. We three sit together for a while, Hannah and I eating and Deb using an old clean towel from inside the shelter to wipe the blood from her legs and then from her stomach. I am not put off by seeing my sister in only underwear but I deliberately look away when she tugs the shirt up to reveal the red coating her midsection. I am reminded too strongly of my nightmares.

She puts on Hannah's shorts. They are a size too big for her but it's only something to cover her for the drive home in case she's pulled over. I announce we're leaving. Hannah is distressed and reluctant to let me go, smothering me in hugs and long, lingering kisses that might have meant something to me once.

"What if he finds me here?" she demands in a terrified whisper, kissing me desperately. I know she means Elway. "He's out there somewhere in this national park. What if he knows where this shelter is and comes here? What if he stumbles here by accident?"

"You've got a gun to keep you safe," I say, gesturing to Deb. She wipes down Elway's pistol and leaves it on a table inside.

"Don't blow your other arm off with that," she says. "Do you even know how to use it?"

" _Yes_ ," Hannah responds indignantly, before turning back to me. "Please, Dexter, don't go. I could get an infection. I could get sick. I'm going to be all alone. Stay here, with me. Stay."

 _Stay_. It's a powerful word, or has been this past week, but from her mouth, it's just a syllable, four letters, a verb I don't intend on performing.

"Sorry. I'll be back." I kiss Hannah quickly, a goodbye kiss, but she clings to me and extends it, enveloping me in possessive, jealous arms. Arm. One stays caught between us in its sling.

"Bye," Deb calls irritably over her shoulder as she starts off down the hill. I disengage from Hannah and back away after her.

"I've got to go," I apologise, and Hannah nods reluctantly.

"I know. I love you."

"Me too," I respond, still walking backwards. "I'll see you soon."

I turn to follow Deb and soon hear leaves skittering underfoot behind me. I catch Deb's arm as I stop and look back to Hannah.

"Wait," the blonde says, and I sigh internally, expecting another drawn-out embrace. I think everyone is surprised when Hannah instead throws her arm around Deb's shoulders and hugs her tightly. My sister automatically pushes away, taken aback.

"What the fuck?" she asks, not aggressively. Hannah steps back obediently.

"Thankyou, Debra," she says, further surprising me. "This might be the last time we see each other, so it's my last chance to say it. I know you hate me. I don't like you either – you _did_ shoot me, and arrest me – but I know how much it's cost you for Dexter and I to be together. And I'm grateful. You could have killed me a dozen times, you could have handed me in on any given day... You didn't."

"It wasn't for you," Deb says pointedly, and Hannah nods.

"I know. It's for Dexter. We both love him so much. I hate that I need to be apart from him, and from Harrison, in order for me to be free and for us to be together again one day, but at least I know they're with the only person who cares about them as much – more, even – than me, and that you'll never let anything happen to them. You look after them even at your own expense. I admire that." She forces a small smile. "Goodbye, Debra."

Deb looks lost for words and only stares at Hannah for a few too many seconds, until she stutters, "Uh, goodbye." Still looking dazed and unsure, she begins walking again, glancing suspiciously over her shoulder several times. I squeeze Hannah's hand in farewell and trail after my sister. I don't know how honest that spiel was from Hannah but I decide it was nice either way. She didn't have to say any of that. She could have left it as it was. She chose to patch things up. But when, after twenty minutes of walking, Deb is retching again, I try not to wonder whether it was an attempt at buttering me up.

"You're not okay," I argue when Deb tries to tell me she is. I crouch beside her and grab her hands before she can wipe her mouth. "Don't. Let me look." I hold her hands in one of mine while I fish my phone out of my pocket to use its light to see by. She closes her eyes against the glare when I shine it at her face. There's red on her lip and chin. I curse and wipe it away for her. "You're still bleeding."

"I'm-"

"You're _not_ okay!" I yell at her, frustrated with her stubbornness, and she rips her hands out of my grip. Not expecting this, I lose my balance and fall onto my back, sliding slightly down the hill on the loose leaves.

"We're in the fucking forest, Dexter!" she yells back. "What do you want me to say? That I'm dying? Because, if we're playing the honesty game now, that's what I think is happening."

"What?" It's my turn to be taken aback, and I am. Unwanted images of a knife buried in soft white flesh and blood flowing over desperate hands creep to the forefront of my mind. Is that happening now, only underneath the skin? "You're not _dying_."

"I'm bleeding internally. I could be dying."

"You aren't," I insist, sitting up. "You're-"

"Okay. Exactly. I'm _okay_. You can't do anything to help, not here, so for all intents and purposes I am _okay_ until we get back to town, al-fucking-right?" She stands and brushes dirt from her knees, then offers her hand to me. I accept it but don't give her any of my weight as I get back to my feet. She still holds it when I am standing opposite her. "Just don't worry about me until we get the hell out of this creepy, cold, stupid forest." She kicks some leaves and continues down the path we picked on our way up. I keep my grip on her hand and lightly twist her arm so that hers loops through mine for comfort and support. She accepts this and we walk back to the cars arm in arm. The more we walk the more heavily she leans on me. I work hard to not think on what she said.

"What time is it?" Deb asks me wearily when we spot the vehicles where we left them. I check my watch.

"Not as late as you think," I advise. She sighs exhaustedly and drops her head and arms like it's all too hard. I grab her hand again and drag her behind me the rest of the way. "You need to stay awake just a tiny bit longer. We need to move Elway's car."

"Again?" she complains, despite already knowing this, since she made the plan with me. She blinks a few times, hard, trying to wake herself up. "I need more fucking Red Bull." I unlock my car while she puts the gloves back on, and then she delves through the plastic bag for yet another can of the energy drink. She cracks the can and starts to drink. She keeps drinking.

"How much of that are you meant to drink in a day?" I ask critically, taking the can from her mid-swig to read the ingredients. She makes an indignant noise as the liquid continues to stream out and tips across her front.

"Such an asshole," she mutters once she's swallowed. She glares at me for a full three seconds before she turns away and the drink comes right back up. I put the can on the car's roof and lean over to hold my sister up while she vomits. When she's finished she mumbles, "This is the worst fucking day, I swear..."

"It's pretty bad," I agree, pulling her upright and back against me. She lets her head fall back onto my shoulder and closes her eyes. "But it's not the worst." I sling my arms around her waist and press my cheek against hers. "You're still here."

"Just barely." She opens her eyes and spots the can on the roof. She pulls away from me to go get it. "I need to fucking wake up."

Suddenly I understand. "No." I snatch the drink out of her reach and throw it as far as I can into the darkness. My sister raises her hands in a confused, helpless gesture as the can sails out of sight, emptying as it goes, and lands somewhere in the underbrush with a thump. "No more."

"I needed that!" Deb exclaims. "I'm too tired. Do you know how long it's been since I slept? Like, actually slept?" She opens the back door again. I realise there is another can.

"Yes, I do." I take her elbows and turn her back to me. "You can't drink that shit anymore, not until you've seen a doctor, at least. It's making you sicker. It's too harsh. You literally can't stomach it," I add when she tries to argue. I wish I'd made the connection earlier. Like the medications would have, the energy drink is burning her delicate insides. She's going to have to be so careful for the next few days, maybe longer. No coffee. No rich or acidic foods. No alcohol. No energy drinks. The blanket ban on all things she likes might kill her quicker than the effects of the poison. "It's melting you. Fucking you up. Water, that's what you need," I realise, releasing her and searching the floor of my car for her water bottle. I find it; there's about half a bottle left. "Drink the lot."

Oddly reluctant, she takes the bottle and staggers over to Elway's car. I follow cautiously. She asks, "Where to?" and climbs into the driver's seat. I catch the door before she can close it.

"Drink," I order, and wait impatiently while she sighs exasperatedly and does as she's told. She downs the bottle and hands it back to me empty. "We can come back and do this tomorrow, you know."

Deb snorts and rolls her eyes. "No, we can't. You've got work. People will see us driving out here. Elway will magically find his way to this exact spot and get his car back. Something will go terribly, terribly wrong. Please," she says, letting her head fall forward onto the steering wheel, "can we just do this quickly so I can go home and sleep?"

I am torn. She's right, we add extra risk if we leave this task to another day, but on the other hand, she is a wreck and should _not_ be driving. I deliberate and she tugs on the door. I release it and she pulls it shut.

"I'm driving. Just go and I'll follow," she instructs. "And don't you dare wake me in the morning before I'm ready to get up."

"You pull over straightaway if you start to feel sick again," I instruct in response, taking her phone and the picture from my pocket. I drop the phone onto her lap through the window. "You leave that there and call me if you need me, or if you need to talk to stay awake. Or for anything. Call me. And _answer it_ if I call you." I offer her the picture. She takes it slowly. "You're only allowed to drive because this says I'm not allowed to fight you. Don't _you_ dare crash."

"Any more orders?" But she tucks the picture into her shirt, my shirt, over her heart, which I take as an agreement to do as I ask. She turns the car on and flicks on the lights. I briefly touch her shoulder, hoping I'm making the right call, and hurry back to my own car to lead.

I take it slow, most of my attention on the dark-coloured car in my rear vision mirror, as I drive back towards town. The road is mostly straight; a few times Deb drifts across the midline, and I am grateful that there are so few other cars out this way tonight. The third time she drifts I call her. Once I've told her that she's all over the road, and she's told me that I'm a judgemental exaggerating dick-face, we talk. About nothing in particular. She's reached the stage of exhaustion that brings deliria and inappropriate humour, and none of our conversations stay on any discernible track for very long before jumping inexplicably elsewhere. I don't mind the lack of coherence. I enjoy the sound of her voice and mine keeps her focussed.

We take the last turn into the national park, the nearest entry to town, and position Elway's car in a secluded, off-the-track glade. Deb sits on the bonnet of my car while I set up the scene. Hannah's blood – the dregs from the jars – pooling and staining the floor of the backseat, as though she were in his car, perhaps on a tarp or waterproof picnic blanket. A tarpaulin missing from Elway's trunk; convenient that he should have that in there. A single strand of Hannah's hair caught on the seatbelt. Deb's hair, the one strand I find on the head rest, removed from the scene. Drips of Hannah's blood all the way to the nearest body of water, a fast-flowing, deep river where families will come tomorrow to go fishing. Elway's sunglasses, stolen from inside his car, hidden in the reeds beside the water, like he dropped them while dumping a body.

"Alright, over here," I call to my sister as I make my way back. She slides from the car and I lay the tarp on the ground. She eyes it unhappily. "Last job, I promise."

She lies on the tarp and I drag it along the ground to create a perfectly Hannah-sized trail through the dirt and leaves all the way to the water. At the river's edge she gets to her feet in the frigid water, walks several metres downstream, and steps back out to meet me. I fold up the tarp.

"And the serial poisoner Hannah McKay," I announce, "who might have survived being shot by Deputy Marshal Max Clayton was she not abducted by Jacob Elway on her way out of the building and denied immediate medical attention, died in the back of Elway's car while he deliberated on who to contact now that Clayton was dead. Not knowing how to explain the dead woman in the back of his car, Elway panicked and drove out here to dump the body. McKay's body was washed away in the river and never located." I smile at Debra. "Probably eaten by whatever the fuck lives in this creepy, cold, stupid forest."

She stares back at me, disgusted but impressed.

"You've done this too many times," she decides, and we pick our way carefully back to my car, trying not to leave obvious footprints. "Would you have done this for me?"

I slow and Deb carries on ahead of me through the trees. I'm not sure how to take her question, and when she glances back at me without much concern, I am even further confused.

"You mean, all this effort to help Hannah escape justice?" I ask. "Would I do it for you? I _am_ doing it for you. For you, for me, for everyone whose lives would be ruined if I got caught."

"I know you are," she gives me, "but that's not what I mean. I mean, if I died tonight at Clayton's, or in the car on the way over, or yesterday at Vogel's, or any other time we were in some fucked-up situation I shouldn't have been anywhere near, would you have done this? Brought my body here, thrown me into the water? Disposed of the evidence?" She stops and waits for me. I've stopped, frozen at the word 'died'. She asks, "Would you have dumped me in the river? Or at sea, like you do with the others?"

I am lost for words for a long time. My throat is tight; this hardly ever happens, and I know it's emotion that's causing it. The awful, awful scenarios she's detailing are overwhelming and bring up hurtful emotions I don't want to feel and don't have the strength to beat down. Fear is chief among them. I only manage to say, in an oddly strangled voice, "Deb..."

"You can tell me. I won't be mad," she assures me. I shake my head.

"I... I would never try to cover up your..." I can't say it. I deal in it all the time but hers would be mine and I can't say it. She can, tactlessly.

"Death? Because, if this poison kills me, that's what'll happen – I'll die – and I'm wondering, how will you explain that to the coroner? Acid in my stomach?" She actually seems genuinely interested, morbidly curious. "You said you dreamed of me dying. What happens next?"

"Deb, don't," I plead, feeling the tightness spread from my throat to my chest. I press a hand over my heart as my pulse races and my breath becomes erratic. I try to remind myself that she's moody and borderline delirious from lack of sleep, not to mention only twenty-four hours free from a total psychotic breakdown, and so empathy will not be foremost on her list of available emotions. She doesn't mean what she's saying. Knowing that doesn't make me any less upset with what she's saying.

"Don't? Don't ask?"

"Just don't. I don't want to talk about this."

"Well, I want to know. What would you do? Chop me up?" She laughs – _laughs,_ albeit nervously – and adds, "I mean, I'd be dead, so it's not like I'd be around to care-"

"Stop it!" I interrupt forcefully.

"Dex, don't get upset," she says, walking back to me, frowning. "It's only a fucking question. When I die, will you-"

"You're _not_ dying!" I snap, fear collapsing into anger. Anger comes more naturally to me and I prefer it. I am not sure where this depressing talk is coming from. I wonder, has my emotionless creation of this crime scene, among other moments of the night, left her feeling alienated from me? Does she want to see me _feel?_ Like last night when we kissed and she hurt me. I am not sure. I do know that she is off-kilter, displeased with something, angry or upset or afraid. She wants something. She is baiting me, stirring me into a rage to get what she wants from me. So I will become impassioned? So I will blurt out angry, meaningful things? It's one of these. I know this logically but the anger overrules the logic.

"One day I will."

" _No_." I won't hear of it. I point a finger at her threateningly. "You wouldn't dare. I'd-"

"You'd what?" Deb taunts, stepping into my personal space in challenge. "Kill me?" She laughs deliberately, infuriating me. "There's _nothing_. Everybody dies; didn't you say that just a few hours ago? Even the good people. Even you, even me. We might have gotten away with this tonight," she says, gesturing at the tarp rolled up in my arms as she starts to back away from me, "but soon there will be something else, and then something else, and eventually one of us is going to _die_ , and the other person is going to be left here all a-fucking-lone-"

"Yeah, you," I snarl, stalking after her and casting the tarp aside. "You'd handle it. You'd hurt but you'd live." She loves me but she doesn't _need_ me like I _need_ her. "You're _not_ fucking dying. You have to stay with me."

"You're a selfish fuck," my sister hisses at me as I gain on her, and she shoves my chest with both hands, barely setting me back at all. Still I advance and she backtracks, though not with any degree of fear or uncertainty. Like she told me two hours ago, she has never been afraid of me. Likely never will be. This is provocation only. "I knew it. You'd rather me be the one hurting and alone than have to face the same thing yourself. I'm not allowed to leave you but it's alright for you abandon me, is it? Fuck you!"

"No, fuck _you_ , Deb!" I respond furiously. "You _promised_ to never leave me. I didn't promise the same thing back."

Her eyes widen in realisation of this truth and I can see her mind working furiously, screening memories for a loophole. She won't find one. I would never have promised such a thing. Outliving her has never been a plan of mine. She's right, I am a selfish fuck. I never want to live without her. I hate to hurt her and I hate to make her cry but one day, I am determined, I will make her cry one last time... and she'll survive. Free.

"Fuck you twice!" she throws back at me finally. "When I make a promise like that and you say you're in love with me it's _implied_ that you mean the same thing."

"Well I don't," I answer harshly. She steps over a branch. I do the same, quicker. This conversation has gotten completely out of hand. I try to control myself. My advance slows when I say, "I promised not to fight with you anymore; that's what I agreed to. So I'm not fighting with you, Deb-"

"Too fucking bad!" She leans down on her next backward step and picks up a stick. She lobs it at me, and I have to deflect it with my hand. "I'm fighting with you. And I promised I wouldn't." She raises her hands to gesture to the landscape we're in. "No lightning strikes. Ground didn't open to swallow me. If I can break this one I can break-"

My restraint snaps and I come after her with more speed and fury than before. "Shut up!" She continues stumbling back, secretly exhilarated by my undivided attention and the passion I emanate. Her own rage brings her to a level of alertness she hasn't had in hours. Mine does the same for me. "I don't care what you want. You don't get to renege."

She backs into a tree; I catch up. "I hate you!" she screams at me. I grab her shoulder when she tries to slip aside and push her back into the tree. I'm stronger than she is. She literally spits at me.

"You love me!" I roar back into her face, lifting my shoulder to wipe the saliva from my chin. She glares at me but makes no further attempt to struggle away. "You belong to me. If you leave I'll come find you. I'll-"

"Kill me," she snarls, a suggestion to the end of my sentence and a demand at the same time. "Do it. I piss you off. Snap my neck, Dexter, before this fucking poison eats through to my skin."

"You _are not dying_!" I shout at her. I struggle to calm down enough to articulate a proper sentence; it comes out tight and forced. "You're in a bad way but you're going to be fine as long as you stop drinking rubbish. I'll take you to a doctor tomorrow, they'll fucking _tell you_ so."

"It hurts!" she screams furiously. "Just do it!"

"No!" I scream back. Are we twelve, arguing like this? Deb glares at me and, with effort, contains the stream of obscenities that threaten to burst from her.

"I told you to kill me," my sister reminds me, voice low and dangerous.

"You're wasting your breath," I snap. "You know I won't."

"I deserve it!" Deb shouts wildly, wrenching against me. I push back, knocking her straight back into her tree. "Why do you think I'm still sick? It's karma, telling us I was meant to die tonight-"

"What did I tell you would happen if you talked this shit again?" I warn. She ignores the threat, perhaps doesn't recall it. I lean into her, pinning her exactly where she is. She immediately starts to quieten down.

"And I asked you," she says, wildness retreating and control seeping back now that she has me close, where she wanted me, "what you would do about it."

My own fury also deflates, too, slowly, but I don't free her. I breathe heavily through my nose while I wait for emotions to sink to a manageable level. Debra holds my gaze challengingly, silently demanding a response.

"I'd die."

"Before that," she says immediately. I narrow my eyes at her as she slides her hands up my chest seductively, over my shoulders, along my arms, whispering, "What would you do once I finished choking on my own blood and acid-eaten flesh?"

I decide I've heard enough. Played long enough. "What do you think I'd do about it?" I ask finally, flatly. She pauses with her hands on my forearms.

"Dress the location like a crime scene? Pin it on someone so you can feel less bad?"

"Would never shirk responsibility for hurting you." I run my hand from her shoulder to her throat, holding it gently in the same place Elway throttled her. I feel her quick pulse under her skin. I see the teeth-mark bruise on the back of my hand. "Guess again. Or change the subject, even better."

"Steal me. Drop me in the harbour."

"I'm not in the business of dropping you anymore. But I won't hesitate to put you down if you don't stop talking."

"Then what? What would you do?" Deb asks, frustrated. I lean in close like I'm going to kiss her; her breaths sharpen, come quicker. I pause just shy of her mouth.

"You know what," I murmur. While yesterday it frightened and upset me, her now-predictable, electrified reaction is amusing to me tonight. "If I find someone's hurt you, or taken you away, I will track that fucker down across state and federal boundaries, I will strap him to a table with plastic wrap, rip him open while he screams and watch him bleed the fuck out, and I will not waste a heartbeat feeling bad for it. Like I did to my own brother, my blood, for you. Like you'd do for me." I let this sink in; I see that it reaches her through the fog of exhaustion and the ocean of feeling. "So now that we're clear on that," I redirect, "we're going to stop talking about dying, alright?"

She stares into my eyes for a very long time, visibly struggling to verbalise a response. "I'm scared of dying," she admits finally, surprising me. She presses her hand desperately between us, against her abdomen. "It hasn't stopped hurting. I'm afraid Hannah didn't get the acid out quick enough. I'm afraid of falling asleep and not waking up tomorrow. I'm so scared of not being here anymore." She seems to have momentarily forgotten how inappropriately close we are. She just pours out the words. "I'm scared of leaving you and of what you'll do, what you'll destroy, if I'm not here. I don't want you to be alone. But at the same time, I'm afraid of _me_ being alone. I never want to be alone."

I pity her. Finally, I understand what we've been fighting about. I stretch my neck to be able to kiss her forehead.

"You won't be," I whisper against her skin. "Stop stressing."

"I'm scared of being dead after promising Harrison I wouldn't be, and promising you..." She struggles again. "And I'm scared of being a corpse drifting in the ocean."

"You won't be. Just forget it all. Or I'll do it, I swear."

"But Dex," she says, unable to let it go, "the energy drink – you were right, you're always right, it made me sicker. What if I made everything worse? What if..." She falters when I lean into her again and slide my leg up hers, my knee coming to a stop beside her hip. "What if I die from being stupid enough to drink something in Clayton's apartment, even though I _knew_ Hannah was there before us?" She pauses again when I slide my hand from her neck around behind her, ignores me when I ask again for her to stop talking. "What if too much damage has been done already? What if-"

Too quickly for her exhausted brain to keep up with, I pull the second syringe from my sock and jab her in the side of her neck. I give her the full dose; she slumps immediately into my waiting arms. I pocket the needle.

"What if you took a fucking hint," I ask sarcastically, though she can't hear me, "and listened to me for once? I told you I'd tranquilise you if you brought this shit up again."


	28. 28

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I bet they're all glad of that, considering the emotional and physical torment they've received throughout the course of this fic.

"This is your own fault. You should know by now, I mean what I say."

My sister is out for the count. Her head rolls onto her shoulder as I take corners slowly and gently on the way home. I have her strapped safely into the passenger seat with the incriminating tarp at her feet. Though the tarp is pretty much the least of my worries, I reflect as I pass a roving police car. I have two syringes in my pocket, three stolen boxes of evidence from high-profile homicides, several uncleaned jars lined with the blood of a wanted killer, a knife coated in my blood, a used pair of latex gloves with gunshot residue from a fatal shooting that took place earlier this evening... What else? Oh, an entire backseat soaked and stained in blood. And an unconscious detective. That one I think I can explain easily enough, the detective in question being my sister after all, but the rest doesn't look good.

I have to stop into Elway's home. I pull up, unbuckle my seatbelt and grab the boxes from the floor under Deb's feet, one at a time. She doesn't notice; can't notice. Her eyes stay shut and her feet go where I push them. She doesn't even know she's here, but I am glad she is. I'm not mad with her now that she's out of it and not being an utter deranged bitch at me. It has been a surprisingly long time since my father has joined me for a hunt, and having Deb unconscious beside me is like a washed-out version of working with her. I don't like what knowing me fully has done to her soul but if I am selfish – and I am – I should admit that I like working together with her. She is smart, capable, instinctive. She makes an excellent partner, more determined than Lumen, more competent than Zach, more loyal than Miguel.

I empty the non-belonging items from the Speltzer box. My flashlight, Hannah's jars, Deb's gloves. The knife. I stack the three boxes on the roof of the car and lean back through the door.

"Watch the car," I instruct Deb, though she's well and truly past hearing and totally incapable of doing as I ask. I am not remotely worried about her waking up while I am gone. She got the full dose of my syringe and she is physically exhausted. Even when the M99 wears off she will stay asleep. I lock her inside the car and break into Elway's place. It's hardly 'breaking' tonight though, since I have the man's keys. I unlock the door easily and shut it behind me. It takes me very little time to spot what I'm here for – the case files, his computer and his desk, all conveniently laid out in the same little room for me. I arrange the three boxes I brought with me alongside their brothers. Bay Harbour Butcher and Maria La Guerta – the two boxes that could most easily, most completely, unravel my life and my sister's. I kind of want to steal them and set them on fire.

I switch on Elway's computer and take a look through his files. My plan to download photo-editing software onto his computer is unnecessary. He already has several programs, and has a folder full of altered photos. I compare originals with their altered versions. He has done the hard yards for me. Elway, you dishonourable bastard. I sit back and can't help a smirk. Who would have known how close I was to the truth? Jacob Elway really does take pictures of his marks and alter them on his computer to depict people in compromising situations that meet the expectations of clients. What I claimed is actually true. What isn't true is that the photo he sent Deb is one of these shopped photos. Well, that can change, I decide, finding them in a folder of original images, deleting most and copying the one he sent into the folder of digitally altered pictures. I leave two in the 'originals' folder – one of us mid-make-out where my face isn't clear, fuzzy enough that it really could be Joey Quinn, and the one picture of just me, sitting up on Deb's couch with the thin blanket across my lap, probably while she was still standing in her doorway. She's not in the frame. I change the date of this one in 'properties'. It looks like Elway took these on separate days and melded them together to create the offensive image he sent Deb, the one I showed to Angel and Vince.

Elway, the creep he is, has other photos of Debra. Nothing reprehensible, but clearly not pictures she knows about. I print all of these, along with dozens of images of other female clients and workmates that the would-be photographer has snapped. While the printer struggles to keep up with my demand, I go through Elway's notes. He has been dissecting the Hannah McKay case and, like Clayton, has begun to link hers with the cases in the boxes. The link, obviously, is me. Luckily, his note-taking is incomplete, unclear and unpersuasive, so I don't feel too worried leaving it here to be found by forensics when this place is torn apart. It explains the connection between the case boxes on the floor – good luck explaining _that_ , Robbins – and the montage I begin to create on the wall.

I tack the photos of all the women, including my sister, to Elway's wall. I intersperse these with printed annotations, samples, from Elway's personal notes on each case, and with a few pieces of text that I myself take creative licence upon producing. I hang, also, every piece of evidence, every photograph, every newspaper clipping and every note Elway has on Hannah McKay. The overall effect is a wall of women; the picture it paints is one of obsession, invaded privacy and abused power. I stand back to admire my work. To finish the job, I use tape to transfer some of Elway's prints onto the pictures. There. Looks good. Looks like the work of a bitter private investigator with a grudge against women, who would deny a dying female suspect medical attention on his way to hand her in for a sizeable reward, resulting in her death in the back of his car and his cowardly attempt to dispose of the body. I'm hoping that's what the homicide team comes up with, since, as soon as Hannah's blood is identified at Clayton's, I will be pulled from the case.

I lock Elway's door and pull it shut behind me as I leave. I smile across at my sister as I climb into the driver's seat and start the car. She is exactly as I left her.

I start to drive. On the way I stop beside an inconspicuous-looking, mostly-filled dumpster and throw in the tarp from Elway's car and Hannah's jars. No need for those anymore. Several streets from there I find another bin and throw in all of the used gloves.

"We can go home now," I tell Deb uselessly, and drive back to my apartment. It's quite late by now, or rather, quite early the next day, and the car park of my building is silent. I unbuckle Deb and go around to her side to open her door. At her height, she isn't that easy to carry when she's not awake to help by shifting her weight or hold onto me, so it's awkward, but I'll manage. I pull her from her seat and up against my chest, keeping my shoulder under her head as I lift. I have to reposition my hand twice; I feel the drying dampness and thick padding of the cut over her shoulder. Once I have a decent hold on her, I step away from the car and kick the door shut. It makes a louder sound than I expect and I cringe, waiting for a reaction as the echoes die out in the car park. But no one calls out; no one opens their door; Deb doesn't wake up. I exhale with relief and carry my sister across the car park, carefully and slowly up the stairs, and along the landing to my apartment. At my door I set her partly down, keeping one arm hooked behind her and holding her upright as I manage the lock. When the door swings open I scoop the other arm back behind her knees and bring her inside.

It's been days since I slept at my own apartment, I reflect as I lower Deb onto my bed and sit beside her with a hand on her knee. I have stayed at her place every night since we had our fight on the beach, more than a week ago now. God, I realise with a wash of exhaustion, so much has happened in that short time. I think of Vogel's admission that she killed Harry, and that she tried to drive Debra to suicide, too. My botched attempt to kill Vogel, Deb's soul-saving phone call and her agreement to meet me and save me from myself, followed by Saxon chasing me to the shopping centre... Vogel and Saxon appearing at Deb's place, confusing conversations of cheeseburgers, chocolate icing, sushi... Visiting Rita's grave, shopping for Astor's birthday present... Elway being a prick... Harrison's sick day, Vogel stealing Deb's phone, the photo of the dying woman, the dark minutes of believing my sister was stolen and at death's door... The confrontation with Saxon and Vogel, Deb rescuing me, again, and Saxon's death... Clayton... The poison that claimed him and damaged my sister. The forest. Confronting, inappropriate nightmares; confronting, inappropriate requests; confronting, inappropriate discussions. Realisations. Breaking Debra's heart over and over, her breaking mine – who knew I had one? Starting to understand what is really between us. It's so much, too much, especially as I begin to _feel_ it all. How do normal people keep up with it all? I suppose they generally don't have as much insane stuff going on in their lives as we Morgans do.

I squeeze my eyes shut, willing them to keep working for just a little while yet. I remove Deb's shoes and place them beside the bedroom door. I go back outside and empty my car. Deb's handbag and a few other things need to come inside. The final can of Red Bull needs to be emptied and disposed of. I spend half an hour quietly cleaning the blood out of the seats, but it's a half-assed job. I feel almost ashamed of what a pitiful effort I make, but I don't want to wake any of my neighbours, and at least I have removed the 'look' of blood from the fabric. I can do more tomorrow. I go back inside, dispose of the cleaning products and I lock the place up tight. I hide my syringes. I clean the knife that has caused us so much damn trouble. I scrub my hands and arms to rid myself of Hannah's blood. Blood has a strange effect on me. At times it is alluring, other times it is repulsive. It depends on whose it is and what it is doing. Right now I am eager to be free of Hannah, and as her blood washes down my sink I feel her influence on me washing away, too.

I go back to my bedroom, kick off my shoes beside hers, pull off my blood-peppered shirt and lie down beside Deb. She doesn't stir, though by now the tranquiliser's effects will have started to wear off. Now she's just asleep, which she desperately needs. So she can get better, in all ways. Her ravaged mind needs a break from the wild trauma of our life, and her battered body needs time to recuperate after all it's been through. In unconsciousness she has not had any vomiting episode or displayed any other sign that she is still suffering from the poison, which I take to mean I was correct. It was the energy drink that her body was rejecting, unable to handle something so harsh right now. She is not dying. She is fine, or will be, once she's slept. If she's going to be fine, I will be, too. I shift onto my stomach and turn my head to watch her. Her eyelashes rest across her cheekbones, eyes unmoving beneath eyelids, telling of a deep, dreamless sleep. Her expression is peaceful but I reluctantly notice the shadows under her eyes and the faint lines on her brow. When did my little sister stop being little? It happened some time ago but I don't recall exactly when. The steady sound of her breath, as always, is the gentle music to which I can relax most fully. Stretching an arm protectively over her, I fall straight to blackness.

I don't dream. I never have dreams when she is close. I don't need to.

I come around hours later when my phone, still tucked into the pocket of my jeans, vibrates. The curtains are drawn so it's too dark to tell what time of day it is. All I know is I could sleep for another whole day yet. I blink a few times, momentarily disorientated. I am on my own bed. Sideways, perpendicular to my sister. One arm still strewn across Deb, my head is now resting on her stomach. I'm not sure how I rolled into this strange configuration. I normally sleep so heavily and without much movement. I lift my head slightly from the unusual pillow I have chosen to note that she is still fast asleep, essentially unmoved from where I placed her last night. I delicately pry myself away. She doesn't stir at all.

I let myself out into the main living space of the apartment and answer the call from Jamie.

"I know it's early," she apologises, "but I have to drop Harrison off straightaway. Are you home?"

"Where else would I be?" I ask amiably. In a forest, perhaps, or in someone's home without their knowledge?

"Oh, good." She sounds relieved. "You're not going to believe this. I have an interview!" She pauses like she expects me to respond, but then charges ahead excitedly without giving me the chance to. "I never got the letter, it must have been lost in the mail, but I just got a call from Dr Summers' office asking whether I was still coming, since I hadn't confirmed. I can't believe they want to see me! And Dr Summers will be interviewing me _herself_! She used to come and lecture for my class on occasion. It's not like researching at a university or anything like I thought I would be doing after graduating," Jamie admits, "but it would mean working with real patients, working under _the best_ child psychologist in the state and having this amazing mind to pick... She's a specialist in psychological abuse and trauma victims, and her clinic handles all the special cases no one else wants to touch. It's a hardcore branch of the profession but she's so passionate and _so good_ at it! Even Angel knows her, he said he's had to refer victims to her. My head's still spinning – it's only an interview, I might not get it, but if I do...? I mean, I still have the other offer. But Dr Summers! And I could stay in Miami. Dr Summers was the best guest lecturer I ever had," she gushes at the end.

"I think you're in love," I comment dryly, and she laughs. "Is that this morning?"

"It's at nine," Jamie tells me. "I really appreciate this, Dexter. I know I said I'd drop him back to Debra later on-"

"It's nothing," I interrupt. "And anyway, Deb's here. She stayed over."

We finish our conversation and I go and get ready for my day. I shower, finding my skin dirtier and more blood-stained than I realised in my exhaustion last night. Walking evidence. I scrub every inch of myself, disturbed by how invasive and long-wearing Hannah's blood is proving to be. Will Hannah herself be this difficult to remove from my life? I watch the brown water swirl down the drain until it runs clear and turn off the water flow. I dry and dress. Deb still doesn't wake.

I pour myself a coffee and then tip the rest of the coffee grounds into the trash. A waste of a mostly-full jar but worth it, considering it's the first thing my unwell sister will go for when she finally does wake up. I make myself toast and set two more slices of soft bread into the toaster, an invitation to simply flick the lever and cook herself something beneficial. I gave toast to Harrison when he had food poisoning; it should work the same for Deb, whose diagnosis is not far off the same.

Jamie arrives and drops in with Harrison's bag. She greets me in a voice that is forcibly bright and loud; I press a finger to my lip quickly and point to my closed bedroom door.

"Deb's still asleep," I explain, and she nods knowingly. My son races into my arms and grins when I scoop him up. It always warms me from the inside to see my boy. Like my sister, I love him, he makes me better, he makes me _want_ to be better, but _unlike_ my sister, my son doesn't need to be bent or broken to make him love me back. Our love is effortless. He is always happy to see me because he sees the me Deb used to see, the me he wants and she wants and everyone else thinks is the only me. Probably little Deb, the girl whose hand I held on her first day of school, looked at me the same way Harrison now smiles at me, but thirty years on things are somewhat tarnished. Thirty years from right now, will Harrison's love for me be as twisted? Will he narrow his eyes, hazel like mine, like Deb's, at me with a gaze loaded with contempt and unwanted knowledge, trying to decide whether he loves me or hates me or both? I lift him over my shoulder and tip him over while he giggles uncontrollably, marvelling at his trust, his enjoyment of me. I can never let Harrison in like I let in Deb. He can never know me like she does. He is my blood, my baby, the only good I have put into the world; but where I have failed her I can never fail him. It's unfortunate, despicable, that I needed to learn this lesson through such a failure, but what's done is done and Deb is, while damaged, starting to move forward again. She will be okay. I will be, too, and so will my little boy. I roll him over my shoulders and catch him on his way down.

"Alright, you two," Jamie says with a smile. She sets the bag beside the door. "I would stay and unpack that for you but I really don't want to be late."

"No, you go," I encourage. She's all dressed up, looking very professional and strangely mature, but also slightly frazzled by the suddenness of this interview. She turns to open the door again and I notice the tag of her shirt sticking out. "Jamie, wait." I step forward and tuck it in for her. She thanks me and turns back. I see now that she's very nervous, feeling unprepared to catch this amazing opportunity that has been thrown her way unexpectedly. I smile and squeeze her narrow shoulder, hoping I seem encouraging and warm. "You have this in the bag. You've been the best thing in Harrison's life I could have hoped for. Talk to this doctor about what Harrison went through before you met him and how you've worked with him. Go into as much detail as you need to about his history – I won't be offended by you using us as a case study, and this is your future on the line, Jamie. You put me down as a reference, right?" She nods. "If she calls I'll sell you like a medieval farmer trading in his daughter for a few pigs."

Jamie bursts out laughing, nervous tension snapping immediately. Harrison doesn't understand the reference but laughs as well, leaning dangerously out of my grasp to wrap his arms around Jamie's neck.

"You'll win, Jamie," he assures her, pressing a wet kiss to her cheek. She hugs us both tightly and briefly.

"Oh, I'm going to miss you, little buddy," she murmurs to Harrison. "You'll be good for your Aunt Deb while you're away, won't you?"

"I'm _always_ good," Harrison reminds her with that eye-rolling I think he learnt from the aunt in question. "I'll miss you, too. But everything will be all better when I come back," he assures her, sharing a meaningful look with me. I half-smile as Jamie pulls away. My son is getting too good at employing double meanings.

"You'll do great today," I agree. I hold open the door for Jamie.

"You two are the best," she says with a smile. She catches my eye as she leaves. "Thanks, Dexter."

Being nice to Angel's sister is much easier than being nice to mine, I reflect. I wonder if Angel finds the same thing about Deb. I put Harrison down and ask if he's already had breakfast, but of course he has. Jamie is a perfect caretaker. He climbs onto one of the stools and tells me all about the new _Toy Story_ movie, including spoiling the ending. He laughs as he details Buzz Lightyear's misadventures once he is reset. Reset Buzz sounds a bit like usual me, or the me I have been most of my life. Through one unfortunate event of evil, Mr Lightyear's better characteristics are buried beneath the automated behaviours a soulless, brainwashed, determined robot. Luckily, as my son explains, through the help of his friends, the people who know and love him, Buzz is able to be returned to normal. No one gave up on him. They expected him to get better and he did.

"Uncle Angel showed me how to make tacos," Harrison goes on brightly. "He's a way more funner cook than Hannah. He's funny," he adds affectionately. "I made my own tacos."

"You can start cooking for me soon," I suggest with a joking smile, to which he laughs.

"No! You're the daddy, that's your job," he says. "But maybe I could teach you."

"I'd like that." I wash out my coffee mug and dry it. "Should we go and pack your bag for your trip? We'll have to be quiet, because Aunt Deb is sleeping."

I lift him down from the stool and we go to his room to pack. He chooses an outfit for each day he is going to be away and argues with me about what he is going to wear to the party. He describes the mask Joey Quinn has given him and explains that the shirt I am insisting on will not match. We compromise on a completely different shirt.

"Daddy, why can't you come with us today with Orlando?" Harrison complains presently, swinging his legs against the side of the bed, where he is seated. "Astor and Cody won't mind if you come early."

"I know, buddy," I say, zipping his bag shut, "but I have to go to work. Uncle Angel needs me to help him catch bad guys, and with Aunt Deb in Orlando with you, he's going to need all the help he can get."

"I guess," Harrison allows glumly. "It would be better if we all went together, though. You could come to the Disney place with us."

"You'll have fun without me," I assure him, mussing up his hair. "Your brother and sister are going to be so excited to see you. They miss you, you know."

"I miss them, too," my son admits now. "I like it when I go to their house. I wish they were my always-brother and always-sister, like you and Aunt Deb are." He looks away while I force a sad smile. I hate what he's missed out on because of my mistakes. He redirects. "Where is Aunt Deb? Why is she still asleep? Doesn't she know I'm here?"

"She got sick, like you did last week," I explain when he jumps down from his bed. He voices a knowing "Ohh..." and starts for the door. I call him back. "You have to let her sleep. Remember, you needed lots of sleep when you were sick."

"Is she still going to take me to Orlando?" he demands, suddenly noting an unforeseen hole in his well laid-out plans. I agree and he relaxes. He begins to go around his room for toys he wants to take to his siblings' house. He asks, "Why is she sick? She already had sores on her back yesterday. She's always being sick."

"She's the same sick as you were," I explain. Harrison frowns.

"Jamie said I had food poisoning. Is that what Aunt Deb has? From eating someone else's food? That's how you get it, I think."

I hesitate, torn between wanting to correct this misunderstanding and enjoying the innocence of his interpretation of events. "That's what she has," I agree finally. "Remember how you were very sick, but then you ate some nice things that made you feel better? Toast, bananas-"

"Rice, milk, and applesauce too," Harrison recites. "You said your mummy always made that stuff for sore tummies. So," he realises, "Aunt Deb will need some rice with applesauce when she wakes up."

"Try her with some toast first," I recommend. I pause, not sure how much responsibility a four-year-old can be expected to handle. I decide to give it a go – Deb listens more to him than to me, so it's worth a try. "When you're in Orlando, Harrison, you need to remind Aunt Deb to eat healthy things. She shouldn't drink coffees, or Red Bulls-"

"Or beers," he pipes up knowledgeably. "She told me, it's not very healthy to drink beers."

"You're right," I agree. "If she tries to drink beers – or wine – you should remind her that it can make her tummy sick."

"And then she wouldn't be able to eat any of Astor's birthday cake!" Harrison notes with horror. He throws to me the toys he wants to take to the Bennetts'. "Pack those, Daddy, and then you'd better write down all the stuff Aunt Deb isn't allowed to eat. I'm never going to remember them all," he adds in a long-suffering voice.

I do as he says. He sits with me on the couch and I switch on the news. The tropical low out to sea is becoming a hurricane, as predicted, but its path is not yet certain as winds change. I compile a 'do' and 'don't' list. He gives suggestions but he puts most of his attention into a letter he is writing to his friend Alex from kindergarten. There are few discernible 'words' as I know them but he uses recognisable letters, prints them from left to right, continues to experiment with capital and lower case letters and clump his letters into groups of three to eight at a time. Like words. I ask him to read it to me and I am impressed with his approximation of 'show and tell'.

"My teacher writes that on the board every day when she tells us the plan," he explains, proud I have noticed. "It's mine and Alex's favourite." He folds the letter up and offers it to me. I accept it. "Can you take it to school for me, Daddy? Give it to Alex? I'm not going today. I'm going to Orlando!" And as his voice rises in excitement in those last sentences he leaps from the couch, snatches the list I have been writing for him and races off towards my bedroom. I call him back in a low, worried voice but he ignores me and shoves open the door. I am convinced that he'll have woken my sister; I follow. Harrison climbs gracelessly onto the bed beside his unconscious aunt and crawls up alongside her. The movement of the mattress stirs her but she doesn't wake completely. He lifts her arm, lies down and places it back over himself, nestling into her. Deb reactively tightens her arms around him, making him smile, and she drifts close to consciousness.

"Hey, baby," she murmurs into my son's hair. He turns his head to look at her.

"I'm not a baby," he reminds her patiently, while I crouch silently down beside the bed. Deb's eyelids flutter as his voice brings her out of sleep. I reach across and stroke her hair, shushing them both.

"Too loud," I whisper to Harrison, who nods with understanding. To Deb I add, softly, "Go back to sleep. Just keep your eyes closed. Go back to sleep..." She mumbles something incoherent. "That's right, just keep sleeping..."

"Dexter...?" she murmurs thickly, eyes shut. "I feel... What happened?"

"You woke up. Alive, like you were hoping. You'll feel better after a few more hours' sleep. Come see me at work before you leave town, and we can compose a thank you note to Hannah together."

"I'm going to kick your teeth down your throat..." my sister whispers, and I lean over Harrison to kiss her cheek and then his. My son beams up at me.

"See, Daddy, she's okay," he points out. The list is scrunched into his hand. He lowers his voice even further, conspiratorially. "I know it's your job but I'll look after her for you."

"That would be perfect," I tell him gratefully. "I think you're the best man for the job." Certainly better than me. "You know what phone numbers to call if you need any help?"

He recites my mobile number and the emergency number. I feel almost good as I lock up my apartment and head to work. I am extremely tired and emotionally quite tense with the pressures of so many delicate schemes in action, but I am also oddly content. My family is safe and content and with one another, exactly as they should be. Soon Deb and Harrison will be with the Bennetts and everyone I love will be in the same place, waiting for me to come join them. To think a week ago I was silly enough to believe this would be the case if Hannah and Harrison were to accompany me to Argentina. Now I can't imagine what I was thinking. Happiness without my sister and stepchildren? What a selfish, ill-considered plan, to separate not only myself from my sibling but also Harrison from his? I am glad that things, these things at least, have been set right.

I am apprehensive about leaving my car in the parking lot at work. The backseat's fabric is dry and appears clean but forensically speaking, it is saturated with very damning evidence. I remind myself that the best hiding place for such evidence is in plain sight and lock the car over my shoulder as I amble into work.

The station is a hive of activity. I try to act normal, smile at the usual people, and wait for the SWAT team to leap out of tricky hiding places and shoot me to pieces. That doesn't happen, and I reach the briefing room without mishap. I am scared shitless as I listen to where everyone is at, but soon relax as it becomes apparent that, so far, none of my schemes have gone awry. No one mentions Jacob Elway. I hope this means he's still lost in the forest. Angel has been in contact with colleagues upstate who are meant to be receiving Dr Vogel today as a consultant on their case, and apparently she has been communicating with them and giving them no reason to think she has changed her mind. Or that she realises she is being sought out by Miami Metro. Apparently she is acting as though there was not a fatal shooting at her house following a deliberately miscommunicated kidnapping and murder. Lieutenant Batista asks if I have heard from her. I admit I haven't but also that I'm unwilling to attempt to contact her myself after whatever went down in her home. He understands.

Everything is – for now – alright, but the alrightness is fragile and easily undone.

Meanwhile, Clayton's murder has finally been called in by the motel owner, who noticed the blood trail on the stairs this morning and followed it back to the gruesome vision on the third floor. I am disappointed for him. A good guy in life, left to rot for hours in death. I am part of the team that is dispatched to attend to the crime scene. It's a starkly horrible scene by daylight, and smells quite putrid. I freeze in the doorway along with the others. The blood on the walls is dry and there are drip marks where gravity pulled it downward. The floor just looks like a bloodbath. Clayton's body is still and stiff, in the full grip of rigor mortis now, just over twelve hours from his death. The blood on the floor around his face and on his mouth and chin is the most chilling aspect of this awful scene, though; it reminds me of the forest, traces of blood on Deb's chin after she vomited for the umpteenth time. My thumb wiping it away. Her terrified insistence that it would kill her. My refusal to believe it and silent terror that she might be right. This could have been her.

"No fucking way," Quinn mutters, stepping into the apartment ahead of me. The first responders have already checked the building for dangers and we the homicide team, headed by Quinn today, are free to do our bit. Quinn looks back at me with wide eyes. "It's the deputy marshal. He was at the station _yesterday_."

"I can't believe it," I lie, trailing behind him. I look down at the body while Quinn shakes his head in disbelief. "I liked him."

"What the hell happened here?" Quinn asks me. He looks around the place helplessly. "Once it gets called in that it's Clayton the feds are going to be all over this shitstorm. I need something to tell them, bro. Something more than 'your guy had the shit shot out of him'."

I hoist the strap of my bag higher onto my shoulder and look about as though taking in the scene, but actually I am thinking about what he just said. Feds. It didn't occur to me in the fog of tiredness last night that Miami Metro might not be in charge of this investigation. I hope I did a good enough job of dressing the scene to convince the US Marshal Service and the forensics team they use.

"Their guy didn't have any shit shot out of him," I correct finally. I indicate the blood on the floor in front of the door, where Hannah stood while my sister shot her and I poured jars of cold blood over her. "That's from someone else. Probably whoever left the blood trail down the stairs, though, looking at this mess, I can't imagine he made it far." Quinn stops me to call over a younger officer and directs him to follow the blood and see where it leads. "You won't find any bullet wounds in this body, even underneath, or there would be pooling. He's only bleeding from the mouth. Some kind of internal injury."

"Think he took a punch or something to the gut?" Quinn asks. "From whoever was here?"

I shrug. "Possibly," I allow. "Would have needed to be a pretty devastating hit to kill him." I look up at the wall. "Let's retrace."

I spend the morning at the scene, taking photos and stringing up red lines from the spatter on the walls down to the origin, the point in space where the bullet from Clayton's gun struck Hannah's arm. I walk Quinn through what the blood says. The height of the gunshot victim. The height and distance of the shooter and where the shooter was standing. The fact that neither person was moving at the time the gun was discharged. We determine, based on that evidence and the nearness of the gun to the body, that it must have been Clayton to fire the pistol. We wonder aloud why he would just shoot someone at such close range and then seemingly collapse, crawl a few feet and spontaneously die of no clear cause. We agree that he was drinking and stood to shoot. I use the evidence to explain to Quinn the probable location of the gunshot wound on the missing intruder, based on the trajectory of the bullet, the person's height and the amount of blood.

"My officer didn't find anyone," Quinn tells me doubtfully when I insist that this person is probably already dead. "The blood drips all the way down the road, through an alley into the next street, and then disappears. Car?"

While the rest of the forensic team bags up the spilt glass tumbler and the gun, Quinn has me examine the blood trail. It's dry now but just as messy and unappealing to me as it would have been last night fresh. I follow it, talking non-stop about a stumbling, hurrying, unsteady person bleeding profusely, knocking into walls and occasionally pausing. There is a significant pool outside the building on the sidewalk where Deb stopped Hannah and told her off for making so much noise, and then the drops become steadier as we walked quickly towards my car. The trail goes immediately cold in the alley.

"This person wasn't driving," I disagree at this point. "He's lucky he made it this far. Determined guy." I look around. I see the shadowy doorways where I imagined a stalking figure. I now realise this must have been Elway. "Maybe he had an accomplice? Like a getaway car?"

"But why so far away?" Quinn counters. "Makes sense to park your own car out of sight if you'd planned something like this, but a driver could get closer. If someone was here to pick our intruder up following whatever in fuck went down in there, why is he a street away? Why not pick him up from the front door?"

"Maybe it was an unexpected pick-up," I suggest. "A lifeline."

Quinn gets a call and has to report to Batista on what we've learnt so far. I photograph everything while officers secure this area as an extension of our crime scene. I begin scraping samples for lab testing. I ensure each sample is impeccable, pristine, no opportunity for anyone to accuse me of bias or unprofessionalism when this case is busted open as being related to the Hannah McKay search and I'm pulled away from working it and placed under the microscope as a potential suspect.

Quinn interviews the motel's inhabitants and I take cheek swabs from each of them, with their permission, to test against any DNA we find in Clayton's apartment, though everyone knows none of these people are the intruder since none of them has a big hole in them. I narrow my eyes at the ratty-haired, rough old drunk staying in the apartment nearest to Clayton's. The neighbour who sat in his motel room with the lights off last night when I first passed, making me think the place was empty. The piece of shit that couldn't even dial a three-digit number and leave an anonymous message letting law enforcement know there was a violent altercation in his building.

"You been drinking?" Quinn asks, distastefully. The neighbour shakes his head unconvincingly.

"Gotta be sober," he informs the detective. "Condition of my parole."

"Hmm. What happened here?"

"I dunno." The man's tone reeks of deliberate unhelpfulness and his breath, when he opens his mouth for my swab, reeks of alcohol.

"You don't know?" Quinn gestures to the police and forensic technicians milling about. "Well, it seems someone _died_ in the room up from yours. Possibly quite loudly. Were you here last night?"

"Yep. Been inside sin' four o'clock yesterday," the witness drawls.

"Can you tell me what you heard last night between seven and eight?"

"I 'eard nuffin," he insists carelessly while I seal away the swab. "I wa' jus' sleepin' all night. Heard nuffin, saw nuffin."

"Are you sure?" I challenge spitefully, unable to help myself. Quinn raises an eyebrow at me – I have no place talking to witnesses – and the drunk sits up a bit straighter, surprised by my tone. "A gunshot in the next room, that's pretty hard to sleep through, unless you're passed out blind drunk."

Quinn drops all pretence of proper procedure. "What he said. A man was murdered thirty feet from you and you heard _nuffin_? You would need to be fucking plastered to not hear a gun go off next door. Sober my _ass_." Quinn glares at the witness and withdraws his handcuffs. "Turn the fuck around so I can arrest you for violating the conditions of your parole, since being a useless waste of space isn't illegal yet."

The neighbour's ruddy, prickly face flushes red with embarrassment and he backs up, raising his hands like in surrender.

"Maybe I heard some arguin'" he admits finally. "The fella, and I figured it was his lady friend again. His wife. She came last week and they yelled and scrapped an' all. Figured it was more o' the same. Then..." He hesitates. "I think he mighta shot 'er."

"You _think_ he might have _shot_ her, and you didn't call 911?" Quinn questions incredulously as I walk away. I don't need to do anything else. Quinn will grill this loser appropriately. Or inappropriately. However you want to look at it.

Later, I am back in the apartment unpicking the bullet from the wall when another tech tests Clayton's cold, stiff hands for GSR.

"Positive," she reports to Quinn as he strides in. "It's here on his hands and we found it on the gun, too."

She bags the test swab and I come over with my little plastic bag and its bullet.

"What's the bet this matches his gun?" I ask rhetorically, meticulously labelling the bag.

"And that the blood on it matches the wife?" the tech chimes in. I shrug. That theory will be disproved quickly enough. I put my plastic bag into the box of evidence and crouch beside Clayton's body. The other tech moves away and I use a swab to collect a sample of the blood on his mouth. Quinn crouches opposite me. For a long time he strongly disliked me and even now, I don't think he specifically _likes_ me any more than I particularly _like_ him, but these past few days of mutually worrying about the same person has apparently forged a newfound mateship and respect that I haven't experienced with him before. I can't say I dislike it. I don't like that he's involving himself more in my life, even if it is work life, but I don't mind the change in tone of our relationship from aggressively competitive to calm, professional and respectful. Oddly, he actually seems to value my opinion lately.

"Dexter," he says in a low voice, "this makes no goddamn sense. I called Angel again, he had someone look into Clayton's wife. He's separated, less than amicably, and she's got the kid." I recall that Clayton has a daughter, whose name was his password to his computer. My stupid, traitorous emotions rear their unwelcome head and prompt me to reflect on how sad it is that this adored little girl no longer has a dad. "Angel notified the Marshal Service and they found the wife and had to tell her about Clayton. But she's in another freaking state."

"So you're back to the random intruder theory," I guess. Quinn scrubs his face with his hands.

"The asshole next door heard a _female_ voice."

"He was also wasted," I point out.

"Talk me through this again. Clayton's sitting here, drinking booze, minding his fucking business, when some asshole busts in and beats the shit out of him, backs away, lets him shoot them, bleeds everywhere and runs off, and Clayton just lies down and dies? What. The. Fuck?"

"We're missing a few crucial pieces," I remind him, hoping someone connects the other dots for me shortly. This can't be an unclear case. It needs to be open-shut, clean-cut, obvious. I need it to go away. I bag the swab and together we turn the body over and examine it. "There's no evidence he was even touched. No bruising. A trauma forceful enough to cause this sort of internal bleeding – and death – would leave a noticeable mark. He got fucked up some other way."

"Like what?"

"Something crippling, because he didn't move very far... his phone's still on the counter... but something slow. Look at these smears of blood across the carpet. I'm thinking thrashing, writhing. Sadly I think this was a slow, painful way to go."

"Detective?" We both look over at the female tech. She is by the door, the bloodiest part of the apartment, and has her tweezers in her fingers. "I might have found something. I could be wrong, but..."

My stomach clenches. I have been edgy and tense all morning but I think I have faked my way through relatively well. Now, though, I am worried. Is there something I missed? Some clue I forgot to clear up? Is everything ruined?

Quinn goes over to look. He turns straight back to me. "No _fucking_ way!"

"What?" I ask, concentrating on acting surprised and interested instead of simply getting to my feet and bolting from the building like I want to. Driving straight to my place. Throwing my drowsy sister over one shoulder and my giggling son over the other. Grabbing my getaway bag. Getting the hell away.

Quinn takes the pair of tweezers from the tech and brandishes it triumphantly. I catch a glimpse of something thin and light coloured caught between the arms of the little tool.

"Blonde fucking hair," he informs me. He gives it back to the tech. "Hannah _fucking_ McKay. The female voice. Your psycho ex-girlfriend has finally made her comeback. Man," Quinn adds sorrowfully, looking back at the body, "what a way to go – finally find the bitch, get a shot in and then die." As though we've timed it, he and I both look at the crystal decanter on the side table. Quinn's eyes widen again, and I know that the pieces are falling into place for him. "Oh, shit. Internal bleeding. Drinking booze, minding his business, falls over and dies... Shoots an intruder for no apparent reason... Dex, this bitch _poisoned_ Clayton."

"Holy..." I murmur, as though shocked and horrified. I stand and look around the scene again as though looking with fresh eyes. "The blood spatter is consistent with a person of Hannah's height."

"And what about where the body is?" Quinn listens to me agree with him and then takes over, gesturing as his keen imagination leads him down the path I laid out. "Sitting in the armchair, drinking – minding his own business, as I said – starts to feel unwell. McKay's still in the apartment, hiding, probably in that other room that's all thrown around... Tries to sneak out, spotted, shot..." He flicks his fingers at the walls to demonstrate the blood spray. "Both go down for a while, in a lot of pain, then McKay makes a run for it and Clayton tries to get to his phone. Dies."

"That actually fits with what the evidence is telling us," I tell him, and another tech nods.

"How soon can you have this blood and this hair run for DNA?" Quinn demands, and I give an approximate window. "I want you to get back to the station and make a start. Give this case priority over everything else – I mean _everything_ , even the Oliver Saxon bullshit from Monday. I'll call ahead to Angel but he'll agree, we need to make some decent headway on this before the feds get here and start dicking us around."

"Detective," the female tech intervenes uncomfortably. She gestures at me without looking at me. "Isn't there something of a _conflict of interest_ having Morgan run DNA samples that we expect to belong to his ex-girlfriend?"

"Why?" Quinn asks bluntly. "You think he's going to fuck with the results?" The tech blushes and quietly says no. Quinn continues, "McKay's a fucking psycho. Dexter doesn't want the bitch running amok any more than the rest of us do. Right?" he asks me. I nod immediately.

"We weren't together long, but I wonder whether I ever really knew her. She killed Sal Price, and probably her husbands, and I could have been next. What she could have done to my family; what she could _still_ do to my family..." I don't want to think about it. "As awful as it is to say, I really hope Clayton's shot took her out." I stand and look once more at his body. Poor dude. "She put him through hell."

"Not to mention she's a danger to everyone who's ever known her," Quinn comments. He turns back to the blushing tech. "Fine. _You_ take this shit back and give it to Masuka. No one else in the forensics department touches this blood work. This is going to be a nightmare custody battle against the feds, and I don't want a pinprick of doubt against our professionalism."

She takes the boxes back to work and I stay with Quinn to complete the job. I don't stay long. Angel turns up, unhappy with a deputy marshal dead in his jurisdiction twenty-four hours after speaking to him. Quinn walks him through the theory. Our lieutenant rubs his eyes tiredly.

"This is fucked-up," he says. "He's been just one step behind this bitch for weeks and _wham_ , like a ghost, she whacks him and disappears? At least he got a shot in. I've put a call out to all the hospitals." He looks around and spots me. "Dexter, get the hell out of here. This is going to be a federal case, and we're going to look like incompetent dicknoses if it gets out that the suspect's ex-lover was leading the forensics team on the crime scene." He glares at Quinn. "You should have sent him back the second you thought McKay might've been involved."

We both apologise and I pack my kit and leave. I return to work and accept ridicule from Masuka for being taken off a case because I used to sleep with a serial killer. I am told by Sergeant Miller to work exclusively on the Oliver Saxon case while Masuka rushes through testing for Clayton's death. I run a ballistics test on the bullets taken from Vogel's. I conclusively match four bullets to Debra's gun and prove that the other six are from the same weapon, location unknown. I compile a short ballistics report detailing these finds, as well as the bullet sizes and the likely gun type. I take blood from one of Deb's bullets to prove it was the one that struck Saxon's leg, but I am unable to run tests on it immediately because Masuka is using the equipment.

"Processing, processing, processing," he recites, bored, as he waits for the Clayton blood work to finish. "Made out with your sister lately?"

"Not lately," I answer coolly. "Strike one, Masuka. Ask me again and you'll see why Harry Morgan had me tested by a behavioural psychologist but not Deb."

"There's nothing odd about Deb," Vince says, confused and totally missing the implied threat. "This had better not take much longer. I'm out of here at three and not coming back in until Monday. Niki and I are going on a road trip."

He smiles so excitedly that I have to drop my bad mood with him and smile back. It's nice that Vince has Niki now and their relationship has so quickly blossomed into something so natural and easy. After a few blunders he has found his feet and fallen quite neatly into the role of 'dad'. I listen with actual interest as he tells me about his long weekend plans with his daughter. He expresses his own amazement about what his life has suddenly become, and how much he likes being a dad. An idea strikes him.

"Dexter, I have a daughter," he says, and I nod slowly, because that has been the topic of this conversation and this fact is well-established by now. "You have a daughter. Angel has a daughter. We should all go on a triple-daddy-daughter-date!"

I cringe. "Please don't call it that again. I don't need the kind of investigation that comes with people thinking we 'date' our daughters. Three middle-aged men and three teenage girls out for dinner somewhere? I don't think that's done, at least not in respectable society."

"Why not?" Masuka can't imagine how this could be misinterpreted. "We're friends, and our girls would get along great. I bet it's been ages since Astor and Auri saw each other, and they would love Niki. Everyone loves Niki," he adds affectionately, perhaps slightly biased.

"Come up with a better name for it and I'll try to sell it to Astor when I see her this weekend," I agree with a yawn. "I don't think it's ever been attempted before. It sounds creepy and I don't like our chances of convincing _three_ moody teenage girls to spend their night with not only their own dorky dad, but two others as well. At least they can roll their eyes at each other and share knowing, pained looks across the table whenever we make lame jokes or start talking about the 'good old days'."

"That's good," Vince encourages. "Tell Astor that when you ask her."

I give him a wave of amused agreement and let myself back into my lab, rubbing my tired eyes as I reach out to flick the lights on. I don't touch the switch. Something sharp pricks the skin of my forearm and I automatically pull away and turn.

I see that I am not alone. I am as surprised by who it is as by what she has in her hand.

"What are you doing?" I ask, forgetting to add 'here' to my question when I feel my muscles seize and then release and my vision starts to blur. She watches as I sway on my feet. "What...?"

"Don't ask what you've done to deserve it," she answers. "We both _know_."

My field of vision narrows quickly and then it all goes black.

 


	29. 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: I do not own Dexter or any of its characters. I only own this story, and it isn't making any money, so stress less, Showtime.

I gather that she feels at least a little bad about it, because when I come to, Deb's worried hazel eyes are the first thing I see. I'm sprawled across the floor of my lab, feeling a little bumped and bruised from my unexpected descent, and she's lying across from me, chin on her hands, eyes on mine as I blink drowsily. The grey of unconsciousness dissolves only slowly.

"...The hell?" I grumble. My muscles aren't paying attention to the impulses sent from my foggy brain.

"You're awake," my sister whispers. "Alive. Like you hoped." I don't miss the irony.

"You drugged me," I accuse finally, tongue thick with sleep.

" _You_ drugged _me_ ," she replies. "Seemed only fair."

"Bitch," I mumble. I roll my stiff shoulders and get my awkwardly bent arms underneath me. I start to push but lack the strength at the present moment. I stay where I am. "I, at least, caught you; didn't just let you fall on the floor." Deb lifts her head and reaches both hands out to cup my face. I try to pull away but can't.

"You scared me," she says. "You wouldn't wake up."

"Why would you care if I woke up?"

"Don't be an ass. Of course I care. I was angry and wanted to see you get a taste of your own medicine." She cocks her head to the side. "I was actually going to leave your lying, deceiving ass right there on the floor and go. But I'd never seen someone just _drop_ like that. It was like I'd shot you. Then you were out and you wouldn't wake up. You were... blank."

"You gave me _animal tranquiliser_. It's for _horses_ and shit." My vision is clearing and my control of my facial muscles is mostly returned. "How long was I out?"

Deb twists her arm to look at her watch without taking her hand from my cheek. "Fifteen minutes?"

"You didn't give me much, then." I stretch out my arm and turn my wrist to look at the little pinprick where she stuck me with my own needle. "What were you thinking? Attacking me in your own damn precinct?"

She rejects this. "I didn't _attack_ you. You had it coming. And Angel already poked his head in; I told him you'd fainted and asked him to keep Harrison entertained."

"You've lost your mind," I marvel. "You brought my _child_ along with you to assault me?"

"Fuck you," she answers, though without bite or aggression. "You did this to me, too, remember? I've been drowsy as shit all day. _And_ you tipped out all the fucking coffee. Prick." We glare at each other. "Thanks for the fucking kindergarten cop you left with me, by the way. He's not going to let me eat or drink anything I want."

"Glad to hear it." I finally gather the strength to sit up, and Deb releases my face to push herself up also. We sit against the cabinets, eyeing each other distastefully across the narrow lab. "You'll thank me with some sincerity when your organs don't rot from all the shit you drink." I rub my face, my head. I can feel that I didn't land nicely. "I still can't believe you fucking drugged me. You're meant to be the least of my worries."

"How could you do that to me?" Deb asks. She stares at me and I stare back, uncomprehending. "Watching all the life drain out of your face, and then your body just drop to the floor... that was awful. It was like you were dead; still breathing but not really in there. I'd planned to walk straight out," she admits now. "I was going to drive off and let you ring me all pissed off, I thought you deserved that. Since you drugged me and let me wake up alone-"

"You weren't alone. You had Harrison."

Deb continues as if I hadn't interrupted. "But I couldn't leave. Afraid I'd fucked up, done it wrong. I kept shaking you, whispering to you, but you couldn't hear me. You were _empty_. How could you stand seeing me like that? Is it just because you've done it so many times, to so many people, that you just don't feel anything about it anymore?"

That's probably it, but I shrug instead of agreeing. "Do you remember what you were saying last night before I put you out?" She thinks about it, nods. "It was pretty fucking bad, Deb. Knocking you out was preferable to the conversation you were insistent upon having."

She looks away. "I was scared. I was... hurting." Her hands fidget; she's regretting the things she said, the pain her words put me through. "And you were mean."

I laugh with surprise. "Says _you_. Nastiest fucking _bitch_ in Florida."

Deb looks back at me when I say this. I feel a sort of flutter in my stomach that I am not used to; a physical response to apprehension and regret. I know I shouldn't have said that. She's right, I was mean, I said awful things back to her and I am the older sibling – I should know better, I should be stronger, I should be able to control myself and lead by example. If I tranquilise her I shouldn't berate her for wanting to get me back. I should know to expect it. I am her big brother, after all. I am the only role model she has had. In fact – weirdly – I should be _honoured_ that she wanted to drug me. That she knew only to follow my lead. That she would risk the consequences of being caught at our workplace with a syringe of animal tranquiliser and her unconscious brother, just to ensure I personally understood how pissed off she was at me. That she cares that much. She needed me to know. And I do.

"Good thing you love me, then," she says finally, shifting her foot tentatively so it touches mine ever so slightly, and I sigh and let my head fall back against the cabinet behind me.

"Good thing," I agree begrudgingly. We sit for a while in companionable silence as my strength returns and my head clears. Normally, when I awaken a victim, I use smelling salts to bring them around quickly, but I have woken naturally to the stupor of drugs. "How _do_ you feel today?"

"Guilty."

I know she doesn't mean for how she upset me. "Clayton? That had nothing to do with you. There was absolutely nothing you – or I – could have done once we knew. We were just lucky we caught your case of it before you got to that stage." I can't even imagine how today would look if she were not in it. "You can't blame yourself for what happened to him."

"Except," she says, dully, "he would never have _been_ in Miami if _I_ hadn't gone to Elway about Hannah."

True. "And you would never have gone to Elway if _I_ had given you other options." I backed Debra into a corner and forced her hand when I kept telling her I would handle Hannah and then reneging on my word. Being weak. "It's my fault. You can blame me." The selfish side of me hopes she won't, because it wants her to like me, but my altruistic side wants to take everything she ever blamed herself for and take responsibility for it all. "How are you feeling? Are you any better?"

"Tired," she shares, and she looks it, but I privately note that she looks better rested than she has since the weekend. "My left ear is out – everything's a bit muffled, I hope that fixes itself up. I'm still queasy, but nowhere near as bad as last night. I don't feel sick. I'm not in any pain."

"You should still go to a doctor," I insist.

"And say what? I have acid poisoning because I broke into a federal marshal's motel room and drank his booze with him while a serial poisoner hid in the next room, and fuck, she'd already spiked the shit, intending it for him, and I was just too damn trusting." Deb smiles thinly and shakes her head at me. "Should I throw in that, the day before, I tracked my serial killer brother to his serial killer-making psychiatrist's house to protect him from another serial killer, lying to the police about it the whole way of course, and got shot at for my trouble?"

"How is your shoulder?"

"The stitches held," Deb tells me, reaching across her chest to touch the injury in question. I notice her outfit covers them all – the burn on her chest, the scrapes on her knees, the cuts in her back – except a graze on her palm from being dragged to the forest floor. "All good to go to Orlando, supposing my bossy, interfering big brother lets me, and doesn't decide to tranquilise me for trying."

"Remains to be seen."

"Spoken to Hannah?"

"No, I haven't heard from her." Surprisingly. "But I haven't called her, either, and I'm sure I'll pay for that somewhere along the line."

"When will she be leaving? The sooner the better."

"I'll go see her tomorrow night, make sure her arm's healing," I decide, "but I'll wait until after I come back from Orlando to get her out. As far as anyone here will know, I'll still be with you, and with all the blood at the crime scene and no suspicious hospital check-in, by that point, Miami Metro will have changed their focus to looking for a corpse in an alley rather than a living, breathing, escaping fugitive."

"And Elway? Any word?" Deb asks.

"No one's looked into him yet, but he doesn't seem to have surfaced." I try to stand; end up straight back on my rear, head swimming. I beckon to my sister with one hand. "Show me how much you used."

Deb leans forward to pull the needle from her handbag, nearby on the floor. She rolls it obediently to me. I have a look and note that she used hardly anything, maybe the same amount I gave her to inject into Elway. It must be affecting me more because I'm tired.

"Well," I say, "for starters, you should be sticking this into the neck. Right here." I show her on myself. "Like you did with Elway. Straight into the bloodstream and already en route to the vitals, whereas the limbs are extremities – it takes a few seconds to reach the critical places and bring the opponent down. If I'd wanted to I could have struck back, or called for help. Ruined your whole day."

"Thanks for being such a considerate victim and just going down quietly," Debra replies with mock earnest, settling back against her drawers. "I already knew all that. I wanted you to see me."

"So you chose the arm. Fair enough." I roll the syringe between my fingers like a pen and extend my other arm so we can both see the dot where the needle went in. "This is probably going to bruise, because you were a bit rough. If you're neater, and go in at an angle," I show her with the syringe in the air above my own arm, and she sits forward to kneel, rocking onto her ankles so she can watch, "and don't jostle it, either... there'll be a smaller hole and less chance of creating a bleed. Less evidence, in case the body's found. You'd want to use more if you were going to handle the body, though, move it or something, but even that dose was enough to put me down, and you could have bailed if you'd wanted. And you did a good job hiding; I didn't see it coming. You planned it well." I stop when I realise I am congratulating my pure-hearted, good-guy sister on her skills at treachery and deception. On being _me_. I change my tact immediately, and say, gruffly, "Don't do it again."

" _You_ don't do it again," she shoots back. "Maybe I was being an asshole; maybe I was painful or difficult or unreasonable or whatever, but that was my choice to be and you don't have the right to just inject me with tranquiliser when I disagree with you or say something you don't want to hear."

"I know," I say immediately, hoping it sounds sincere. I want to be sincere. I want to agree that she is her own person with rights to say and think what she likes without fear of consequences from me, but there is this tiny, selfish little voice in the back of my mind that laughs this notion off as a cute joke. I take solace in the fact that the little voice is at least little now, whereas once it was the main voice. I take this as an improvement on myself as a human being, and, pleased, I say again with slightly more conviction, "I know," but I also know that I can't promise not to tranquilise her again. It could happen, and I'd probably feel about as bad about it as I have every other time.

"Good," she says, frowning. "Because it was fucking _uncool_ of you."

"Did Angel give you your gun back yet?" I ask, changing direction before she can try to force a promise out of me that I won't make. It works. She rolls her eyes. Blood doesn't make family, but the way she does that, she looks _exactly_ like Harrison did earlier and it makes you wonder whether they really might be blood.

"He says he'll clear me _after_ I return from leave," she says irritably. I frown, too. I don't like this arrangement at all.

"Didn't you tell him-" I begin; she railroads me.

"Of course I did," she snaps. "Don't you think I tried _everything_ to change his goddamn mind? I begged, I argued, I did everything short of taking my clothes off."

"Well, then, you didn't try _everything_. Maybe you should reconsider."

I raise my hands defensively as Deb leans over to hit me, but I'm saved by the door suddenly opening. She freezes in place; I whip the syringe out of sight behind my hip. Angel steps in, relief flooding his kind face.

"Everything back to normal, I see," he says of me cowering and Deb frozen with a fist in the air. He gives us a warm, knowing smile as Deb releases her fist and hits my arm just once, plenty hard, for the record, and sits back on her feet. "Are you alright, Dexter?"

"No, my arm hurts," I complain, earning me another punch to the other arm. "Angel, make her stop."

"Make me yourself; don't go crying to Angel," Deb challenges, hitting me again, though lighter this time. "Are you going to cry? Again?"

"I might," I warn, while Angel smirks and queries, "Again?"

"Oops," Deb says sweetly, pausing with her fist drawn back. "Was I not meant to mention that I made you _cry_?"

I smile back at her the same way. "Should I bring up what you _did_ to make me cry?"

That puts her in her place. She scowls at me, deliberating how serious I am in my threat. Angel raises an eyebrow, curious, in the moment of still silence that follows. Then Deb strikes out at my arm; I pre-empt her movement and push her away by the shoulders, limiting the strength of her strike; Harrison bolts into the lab, grinning at us. He throws himself into the gap made between us by my pushing Deb away. He lands bodily on my chest and wraps his arms around me. I slide the needle into my pocket, away from him.

"I made her eat the toast, Daddy, like you said," he promises. Deb tries to hide her smile behind a falsely angry look. Classic little icebreaker, my boy. The whole feeling of the lab changes just for him being in it.

"He's been a good boy, helping me do some stapling," Angel says. "What happened to you, Dex? I came in here and you were _out_ , just sprawled all over the floor. Deb couldn't get you awake."

I glance at my sister over Harrison's head. There are so, so many lies between us. What's one more? I don't mind them so much now that we're in them together, and we no longer have secrets from each other. My lies are her lies. Her lies are mine.

"I actually don't know," I say finally, resting a hand on my forehead as though it's all unclear or fuzzy, when in fact, I have a very distinct memory of Deb's spiteful hazel glare through the shadows of my darkened lab. "I just came in here from talking with Vince, and the next thing I knew I was on the floor looking up at Deb. I must have just... passed out. I haven't been sleeping very well, and I've started this new low-sugar diet..."

"You didn't have a lunchbreak today, did you?" Angel asks critically. I shake my head, glad for this little grain of truth to flesh out our story. "Food is fuel, bro. It's not just for enjoyment that we eat, you know."

I nod to humour him. As if I don't know this. Silly little Dexter, the hopelessly ignorant lab rat. Deb gets to her feet and offers me her hand, like she did last night. Harrison hops off me and runs out of the lab, and I accept Deb's help; I surprise myself by actually needing it. I don't feel one hundred percent yet.

"Angel, why can't Deb have her gun back?" I ask once I am standing. Our boss gives us both a resigned look.

"She's already started on you, too, has she? I told her, she needs to be cleared for duty. She needs to actually sit the psych evaluation. It'll all happen as soon as she gets back from leave."

"I should have been cleared _already_ ," Deb argues. "It's _me_. If this were twelve months ago and our situations were reversed, I would have cleared you in a heartbeat. And I didn't even kill the guy – I just brought the bastard down, it's his own stupid fault he was running with scissors."

"You know I agree with you completely," Angel assures her. "I don't have a shred of doubt in you. But you were also shot _at_ , you took a hit, and this week off couldn't have been planned better if I'd organised it myself. If you weren't injured, and if I didn't care enough to worry for you, and if it were really up to me and me alone – then, yes, I would have signed off on you in an instant and you'd have been back pounding the pavement with the rest of us yesterday. But it's not just up to me and you know that. Matthews is taking a very personal interest in the Vogel-Saxon shooting and that's slowed all the procedures down at my end."

I gather Deb didn't try the avenue I am about to attempt. "Evelyn shot at Deb instead of Oliver Saxon," I remind the lieutenant. "That still doesn't sit well with me, and I know it's the same for you and Tom. Dr Vogel is up that way, not far from Orlando, supposedly, and I really think she's lost the plot. And now Hannah McKay is back and killing people again – did Angel tell you about that?" I ask Deb, as though realising that she hasn't been at work to hear this news. She shakes her head and looks between us. Playing her part. "Well, she's is back and poisoning people again. And she took out the deputy marshal. If she's going after law enforcement that poses a personal threat to her, you could be on her list." I turn back to Angel. "I don't like my sister and son miles and miles away from me with no protection while a crazy doctor and a self-serving, poisoning gardener are missing and conceivably looking for Deb."

"They're not _looking_ for me," Deb argues immediately. Then she turns to Angel with a frown. "Are they?"

He looks uncomfortable now. "Possibly. There's no way of knowing at this point. Dr Vogel _is_ meant to be near Orlando; we're waiting for her to make contact with our colleagues up there so they can bring her in. But there's no decisive evidence to say the doctor is interested in hurting you. The shooting could have just been a wrong time, wrong place deal. And we don't even know for sure whether Clayton was killed by McKay – it's just a theory right now."

"Wait, he's dead? I only spoke to him yesterday."

"He's dead, and if it was McKay who killed him, she isn't coming after you in Orlando," Angel says. "The deputy got a shot at his attacker and from the volume of blood at the scene we're estimating they didn't get far. _If_ it was McKay, _if_ she's alive, and _if_ she still feels vengeful towards you for arresting her, she's in no shape to chase you across the state."

"I hope it was a good shot," Deb comments, looking over to me, to which I agree, "It was." My sister angles her gaze back to our lieutenant. "Two psychotic bitches who have it in for me are on the loose and you won't give me my gun back?"

"Does either of them know you're going out of town? Did you tell Dr Vogel about Astor's birthday?"

Yes. I did. But I don't recall providing details. I don't think I mentioned that Deb and I would be going separately. Deb tells Angel no. He turns to me.

"Spoken to Hannah McKay lately?"

"No." I am taken by surprise with this abrupt question. "Not since I saw her arrested."

"And that day, you didn't mention offhand that in almost a year's time, her arresting officer would be unarmed and defenceless in suburban Orlando for a birthday party?" Our lieutenant raises his eyebrows at me to illustrate how ridiculous I'm being. I relax. "Nothing's going to happen, Dexter. Your sister can take care of herself without a firearm, and McKay and Vogel, if they really are after her, will be looking for her _here_ , not in another city. And our department is all over that shit. Sorry, Deb." Batista shrugs apologetically. "My hands are tied. I'll have the psych sitting at your desk ready for you the day you're back and we'll go from there. I can't do shit while you're officially on leave, and I can't sign anything until the deputy chief finishes reading our reports."

"If one of these bitches finds me in Orlando, I am tying her ass to my bumper and dragging her back here for you to explain to Matthews how a suspect you were 'all over' managed to get so far away," Deb threatens.

"I'd expect nothing less from you," Angel says with a smile as he steps out of the lab and we follow him. I can hear Harrison's excited voice as he chats enthusiastically with someone in the main office. I stoop for Deb's handbag, trying to ignore the wave of dizziness that comes with lowering my head suddenly, and slip the syringe into an inner pocket. If Angel's going to be a stickler for the rules, Deb might as well have something to defend herself with, even if it is less useful to her than her firearm. I stand with the bag as Harrison slips in the door past Angel; as Deb goes to follow the lieutenant out, Joey Quinn appears in front of her, blocking her. He shoulders her back inside and shuts the door behind him. Locking himself and all three Morgans inside the lab together.

"Joey, what're you doing?" my sister asks curiously, accepting her bag from me. Quinn opens the door a crack and leans back through to where Batista is staring after him in confusion.

"Plotting a blind date for you, bro," he explains quickly, then snaps the door shut again. He digs something out of his back pocket. "What did you call Max Clayton for last night?"

Deb blinks once, clearly caught off-guard. I pretend to idly supervise Harrison as he goes through some drawers. "I didn't," she says finally. Quinn smiles thinly, apparently half-expecting this.

"You're really going to try that with me?"

"How do you – Oh," my sister cuts herself off abruptly when Quinn produces a plastic evidence bag with Clayton's mobile phone safely inside. My stomach drops. I didn't even think to delete the phone's call memory last night.

"Yeah. _Oh_. You called him twice in the hour before he died, and he called you once in between. What about?"

"I... I forgot about that," Deb stammers after a pause that goes too long. "Yeah, I called him. We just talked about McKay. The case. Just the case. Details, and stuff."

It's vague, weak. Quinn stares at her; she quails under his gaze. She has gotten better at lying but he loves her like I do – he knows her. She can't lie to me, and she sucks at lying to him.

"Stuff. That's the best you've got?" he asks finally. I feel the fingers of one hand twitch with the desire to dig through Deb's bag for that syringe to knock her ex out so I can evacuate the building with my family and run far away. I liked, or almost liked, Quinn earlier today, but I don't like where this is going. I wait for Deb to be strong and to flip this scenario on its head, but she doesn't.

"That's the best I've got," she confesses quietly. I look at her sharply; Quinn tilts his head to the side, trying to understand.

"The guy came in especially to see you yesterday morning. Grilled you for ages. He speaks to you three times in less than an hour, and then dies. You _forget_ about the calls and then can't even articulate what you spoke to him about. You know how this looks," he says. Deb doesn't answer; I realise I'll need to fix this myself, because she's making no effort to defend herself against her ex-lover. I pick up Harrison and move over to back my sister up.

"It looks like she made two phone calls, which is what she did," I say firmly, stepping in. "One at about six-thirty, maybe seven, another one around seven-thirty, and she took a call in between. She was at my place. Are you suggesting she was elsewhere?"

"No, but I do find it _odd_ that you knew this and didn't mention it to me this morning at the _crime scene_ where we found this particular guy murdered and we talked through a timeline of events," Quinn snaps, turning it back on me. I keep a stoic expression.

"Slipped my mind," I say smoothly. I pass Harrison to Debra. He wraps his arms around her neck and snuggles his face into her neck, waiting out the tension between his adults. "Wasn't relevant anyway. It's not Deb's blood all over the motel room."

"Obviously not," Quinn snaps again. He looks like he wants to say something else, but holds back. He looks at my sister, a strangely reluctant look in his eye. "Tell me again what you spoke to him about. With some conviction, if you wouldn't mind."

Deb is both surprised and uncertain, but goes ahead. "I'd heard there was a sighting, so I, uh, rang him to ask whether it came to anything. He said it didn't. Then he called me back later to ask about a detail in one of the reports, and I had to call him back about it."

"Better." The detective opens the evidence bag, tips the phone into his hand and fiddles around with it for a few tense seconds of silence. He turns the screen to us. We both lean in to read the call log. I see six missed calls from Jacob Elway in the hour between Clayton's death and our meeting with Elway in the forest, and two connected calls (one from and one to) the same number at around the time we were breaking into the apartment. There is no listing of Deb's calls. They have been deleted. "Do the same on yours, and let's all pray to fuck that no one thinks to pull phone records from the provider before this case gets taken over by the feds."

I am not going to look a gift horse in the mouth – I go straight into my sister's bag for her phone and do as Quinn suggests, deleting the three offending calls. Deb hugs her nephew tightly and stares at Quinn with her mouth open, deeply unsure.

"What are you doing, Joey?" she asks quietly. She gives me the same look when she realises what I am doing with her phone. "Dexter? You can't tamper with evidence."

"What evidence?" I reply, tossing the phone back where I found it. Deb looks horrified. I can see in her eyes that she is frightened of what is happening, whatever that might be. Neither of us have any clue why Quinn is worried about Deb's calls to Clayton, what he knows or suspects, or why – even more strangely – he is willing to overlook his own instincts and delete evidence for us. All I know is Quinn just put his own job on the line for my sister, and that's good enough for me.

"Why did you do that?" Deb demands softly of the other detective while he seals the phone back into its bag. "I've got nothing to hide. There's nothing off about me calling Clayton over his case." She doesn't sound much more convincing than she did before.

"I want Hannah McKay for this kill," Quinn explains simply. Harrison looks up, eyes wide and haunted by this mention of Hannah by a policeman to his aunt. "I want her pert little ass on a cold metal chair in our interrogation room and I want to grill her 'til she cries, like you did. Then I want to see her in jail. This is my case – until the feds arrive. If I want to catch McKay before they get here I need my team to focus, and not waste their time chasing their own tails looking into a couple of irrelevant phone calls from _you_. Just keep your mouth shut and we'll all be happy."

"Joey-"

"Deb." He stops her sharply. "Are you my partner or not?" When she nods quickly, he says, "Then do this for me, and trust me, alright?"

He opens the door. Deb nods, very slowly, still hesitant, and walks out with my son. Quinn isn't indicating that he knows anything else, and this kind of rule-bending is definitely within character. She is willing to believe it. I don't. I know he knows more than he's saying, and I know he knows _I_ know something's up when I catch his eye as I, too, pass him. But I won't question it. If he knew the true extent of our lies he wouldn't have trapped himself in a confined space with us. He doesn't know everything; he probably barely knows _anything_. He just knows _something_ more than I expected, and for now, he's happy to overlook it out of respect to his love for Deb. As long as that remains the case, I'm alright with it. I can delve into this mystery later once I've sorted out all my other messes.

"Doesn't matter who; Dex reckons she's more into married guys," Quinn says dismissively to Batista when the lieutenant curiously asks what came of our brief secretive conversation. "Deb said she wasn't good enough for you anyway."

"Aw, thanks, Deb," Angel says affectionately, and my sister offers a small smile over Harrison's shoulder. I can see that she's still shaken by Quinn's confrontation and the possible ramifications. This is a little too close to home. Vince Masuka appears amongst us, a few pages of printed-out paper in his hands.

"I give you one head on a platter, good sir," he says in a mock-formal voice, handing over the pages to Quinn with a flourish. We all look on with interest as the lead detective on this case flips through the pages to the findings. "All of the DNA from the blood and the hair you found at the scene is a perfect match."

"Hannah fucking McKay," he reports to us in triumph. He glances meaningfully at me, and then at Deb. His eyes flicker to my son on her hip. "Oops. Sorry, little guy. Joey has a dirty mouth."

"That's okay," Harrison assures him, more relaxed now that the tense atmosphere of the lab is behind us. "My Aunt Deb says that all the time. She hates Hannah fucking McKay."

"Harrison!" Deb exclaims, shocked, while I glare at her and the other three men fall about laughing. "You don't talk like that. That's yucky. You know better."

"Sorry, Aunt Deb," my four-year-old says, chastised. He leans aside in her grasp to look apologetically at me. "I'm sorry, Daddy."

"And I'm leaving him with you for a whole week," I comment coolly to my sister while she hoists him higher on her hip. "You'd better take him now before I think better of it."

Admonished and embarrassed, Deb says her goodbyes to our colleagues – Angel is wiping a tear of laughter from his eye while he hugs her with one arm – and I guide her to the elevator. The doors open and Harrison leans over her shoulder to shout back at the others, "Thank you for the Spiderman mask, Joey!"

Quinn grins at him and gives him a thumbs-up. "You're welcome, champ. Get lots of photos."

We step into the lift and I notice Deb cast a final look back at him. There's a lot loaded into that look. Regret. Uncertainty. Mistrust. Longing. Sadness. Hope. She's in love with me but she's in love with him, too. The only two men to never have abandoned her, no matter what she's done to sabotage the relationship. I hope, for her sake, that whatever Quinn knows or suspects is something about _me_ and not something about her. I hope it doesn't stop him pursuing her. She deserves to be pursued by someone who will never give up chasing.

"Stop thinking," I scold my sister when the door closes. "He doesn't know."

"You don't know that," she says quietly.

"I know he just let us leave the station. If he knew anything serious we'd both be in lock-up, and we're not. He's either telling the truth, trying to save himself some time, or he suspects you know something about something but doesn't know what, and wants to do you a favour and keep you out of it. Either way," I assure her, "you shouldn't worry. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, and anywhere I've dropped the ball, he's going to catch it. He loves you."

"We went to Aunt Deb's house already to pack for her, and we've got all the presents in the car," Harrison informs me while we ride the lift down. "Even your one. But we won't give them to Astor until Saturday. And you'll be there then."

"I will," I agree. "I can't wait." I pat the side of Deb's handbag and catch her eye. "I put it back. In case." She understands. "Call me every day. _Answer_ when I call you. Keep your phone on you and use the credit card for everything you buy so I can track where you are. Eat clean. Get yourself to a hospital if you have any symptoms from last night. Keep your eyes open for trouble. If you think something's off, _call me_. And I'll be there."

"In three and a half hours," Debra adds promptly. My expression must tighten with frustration at this fact, because I realise that three and a half hours is much too long a wait if she needs my assistance in an emergency. She shifts Harrison to her other hip. "Man, you're getting heavy. Dexter, chill. Angel's right, nothing's going to happen to us there – between whatever Joey knows and getting rid of Hannah, it looks like Miami is the scarier place to be as a Morgan right now. Anyway, I know how to take care of myself. It's bullshit that I can't take my gun but I am a cop, remember? I'm at least a little bit self-sufficient and competent."

"And tough," Harrison backs her up. She nods gratefully.

"Exactly. Thank you."

"Maybe you should stay with me until Saturday. We can drive up together."

"Or maybe we should cancel altogether and live our lives in paranoid terror, lock all the doors and windows, pull all the curtains, grab flashlights and stacks of batteries, and build forts out of sheets and foil in your bedroom and hide out waiting for something to come get us."

"Maybe we should."

"You promised your daughter," Deb reminds me firmly as the elevator doors slide open at the bottom. We walk across the foyer together. "Cody hasn't said anything but he is dying with excitement at seeing you. You promised _me_ that you wouldn't disappoint them." We exit through the staff exit, avoiding the metal detector. "Me not turning up when I said I would is a disappointment in itself. Don't make me into the asshole aunt."

"I don't want to wait until Saturday to go to Orlando," Harrison tells me with a frown. "I want to go today."

"I know you do," I acknowledge, patting his shoulder. "I'll just miss you both. And you did say, it would be better if we all went together."

"But I want to see Astor and Cody _today_." Harrison is surprisingly staunch. He is normally so easy-going and pliable. "You _always_ get to see your sister and I _never_ get to see mine, or my brother. They probably miss me _right now_ , you know."

We have reached the car. Deb blows a raspberry on my son's cheek, dissolving him into giggles. She says to him, "Of course they do." She awkwardly obtains her keys from her bag and unlocks her car. To me, firmly, she says, "Get that door. We're going."

"I used to think this was a great idea, you two getting out of Miami for a week while I got things sorted out, but now I'm concerned I'll get my son back and he'll be you," I comment, pulling the back door open and watching as Deb buckles him into his seat.

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"He's becoming more and more stubborn, he's talking like you, he even rolls his eyes like you do."

"Who else was he going to grow into? You?" Deb finishes with the buckle and stands to speak with me over the top of the door. "He's not turning into me. He's just himself. A bit of you, a bit of Rita, probably some of Jamie, and yeah, a bit of me. And there's no one out there you'd rather him be like, right?"

She's joking but she speaks my mind. She steps aside so I can lean in and kiss my little boy goodbye.

"Remember to take care of each other," I remind Harrison softly, and he obediently shows me the list he has squished underneath his booster seat. "Your aunt is a trouble-maker so you need to keep an eye on her, and I know she'll take good care of you, too."

"Remember to give my letter to Alex," he responds. "It's very important."

I close his door and I am standing opposite my sister. I really don't want her to go, but I think on Monday night when I sat outside her bathroom door and realised that she is her own person who needs to not be _needed_ to death. I think on my dreams, where I pull her much too close for the good of either of us and kill her as a result. I have enemies and though they will hurt her if they get to her, none of them know to look for her in Orlando. If I hold onto her too tightly and keep her near like I want to, I will only hold her in harm's way. I have to let her go. I have to trust her.

"Am I allowed to go?" Deb asks finally. "Or should I just tranquilise myself now and save you the trouble? We wouldn't want me to have a free, independent thought."

"We wouldn't want that," I agree lightly, and force myself to step back onto the curb. Across the lot, climbing out of his own car, I see Tom Matthews and feel his gaze on us. "You should go before I get the chance to think this over properly."

She smiles, a stunning smile, and steps close to hug me tightly. My arms go around her automatically. It's a brief embrace but crushingly fierce. We break away before I can decide not to let her go at all, ever.

"See you Saturday," Deb says brightly, swinging into the drivers' seat and starting the BMW. She backs out of the parking lot and she and Harrison wave to me as they drive off. I wave back until I can't see them anymore. I feel a presence behind my shoulder and glance back at Matthews as he approaches.

"Deputy Chief," I greet him in a friendly voice. He smiles, his usual tight but well-meaning smile.

"Dexter," he responds in kind. "Off to Orlando, are they?"

I nod. "It's Rita's daughter's birthday party on Saturday. Deb's taking Harrison up for the week, and I'll head up for the party itself on the weekend and stay a few more days."

"You're going to miss them." A statement, not a question. "Must be hard to watch your little boy go, even for a few days, considering what you've been through with him."

Yes. The same applies to them both. "I'll cope," I say. "There's no one in the world he's safer with than with Deb."

"Will he behave for her?" Tom asks with a knowing smile, and I smile back.

"If you ask him he'll say he behaves for everyone. No, he's good," I admit as we turn to walk into work together. "He's a good boy, and he's good for her. Better, maybe, than he is for me."

"They're good for each other," my father's friend comments. "A stable mother figure for Harrison; an unshakable responsibility for Debra."

"A male she can count on, I think," I suggest jokingly, and Matthews snorts a breath of laughter, nodding. "You're right. They are good for each other."

"You're devoted to them, your family," Tom notes. "They're very lucky to have you. And you're lucky to have them. I know you'd never do anything to risk them."

That seems an odd thing to say, and I feel my footsteps slow as I look at the deputy chief sidelong.

"I try to do right by them," I agree finally. He nods at someone who is waving him down just inside the door.

"Your father would be so proud of who you've become, Dexter," Tom says, a typical thing for him to say, setting my mind to rest. "You and your sister both. He'd be surprised, I think, but pleased, to see you both now."

"I think so, too," I agree. "Angel said you were still working your way through the Vogel-Saxon reports. What are your thoughts on that?"

Tom stops walking and turns to face me. "What are yours?"

"Concerning."

"Obviously I'm concerned," he says in a low voice to avoid being overheard by passersby. "Evelyn is an old friend, and this business with her son is worrying. Worse, to think she shot at you and your sister – her friend's children."

"Deb," I correct, uneasy. "She shot at Deb. I wasn't there."

"Of course; I forgot," Matthews says smoothly. "You just got the picture message of the dead call girl and arrived on-scene immediately after the shooting." My heart is pounding as I nod, but the deputy chief goes on as if he didn't just brush on a very sensitive truth. "I mean that Evelyn Vogel is the prime example of control. Something has gone very wrong with her for her to turn on a familiar face."

"I thought the same thing," I say, doing an excellent job of acting normal while I get my racing emotions under control. "I hope we can find her soon and get her the help she needs." Unsupervised bed rest at home, preferably, where I can get to her unhindered. "And so we can find out where all this came from."

"When I spoke to Lieutenant Batista earlier he said he'd put you exclusively on Evelyn's case," Tom mentions. "I've got to say, normally, I'd think it was a pretty blatant conflict of interests, but relative to this McKay situation it's the better channel for your skills right now, and of course, I know you're a professional. You'll do whatever you can to find her and solve this mystery, regardless of your involvement in the case."

I agree and leave him with his new conversation at the door and go back up the lift. In the elevator I frown at the seam between the double doors. Am I just being paranoid, or did Matthews seem to allude to believing that there was more to my involvement in Monday's shooting than what Deb's tale and my crime scene analysis claim? Surely I am overreacting. I return to work. Nothing much is different up here – Masuka is packing up for his days off, Quinn and one of his junior officers are pouring over Clayton's phone, office phones wedged between their shoulders and ears, Angel is back in his own office – but it suddenly feels different. It feels unsafe. It feels dangerous, like the inside of a volcano. I look over each of my colleagues as I go back to my lab. Any of these people could at any moment stumble onto a piece of evidence or a sudden instinctive hunch that I am not what I claim to be. They could turn on me in a second. Already Joseph Quinn is perfectly positioned to do so, and worse, I have no idea what his weapon of choice will be. Does he know I've lied about my involvement in Monday's shooting, like Matthews seems to suspect? Does he know I know more about Hannah than I've said? Does he know I kill people? Does he know I hooked up with my sister? What _exactly_ does he know, and why isn't he using it against me?

I settle on the stool in my lab and watch the activity of the main office through my little window. Slowly I close the blinds. Right now, I miss my sister and son terribly. I wish I'd gotten into the car with them and that I was on my way to Orlando already. I wish we were together, getting away from this lonely, frightening place, and that I could leave all the knotty, twisted, murky messes I've created far behind me.


End file.
